Encore + silicone based lubricant from Soft Paris

This review of Soft Paris🦊 Encore + 🛒 silicone-based lubricant is the logical follow-up to the one I did on the water-based one, Encore Histoire d’Eau 🦊. Having received both at the same time, and having used them both (almost) equally, I was able to get an idea and bring the writing of these two articles closer together.

As I explained in my previous article, Soft Paris is a French brand selling a range of sexual well-being products. I contacted them last year to test some of their lubricants and write about it.

Just like water-based lubricants, there’s a lot to be said for those with a silicone base. However, as you may have read on my article outlining the different types of lubricants and compatible activities🦊, silicone-based ones allow for other types of play, but also have their drawbacks, not least being completely synthetic.

Let’s take a closer look at this lubricant together and see if it can take the Palme d’Or for best silicone-based lubricant currently awarded to Überlube🦊.

I don’t have much more to say than I did about the other lubricant, especially if you’ve just read the review. However, if this is not the case, I can repeat that the package was received discreetly.

The standard package effectively protected the contents (two lubricants) and would have been sufficient to protect sex toys or lingerie.

The lubricant was contained in a kraft envelope inside the parcel, although I don’t quite understand why.

The box looks exactly the same as the Encore Histoire d’Eau lubricant. But what could be more normal? Only the composition of the lubricant changes, the purpose of the product is the same. And if a graphic presentation works, why change it?

So we still have this shiny black and gold box containing this silicone-based lubricant. From top to bottom, we find the Soft Paris brand logo, the designation Encore + then French followed by English, the indication that this is a silicone-based intimate lubricant.

The reverse looks strangely familiar. The words are slightly changed, but it’s a slightly modified repeat of the words on the product previously presented. But once again, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Except that I agree that with a silicone-based lubricant, a few drops are enough… For a water-based lubricant, particularly in gel form, it’s difficult to talk about drops.

This familiarity is exacerbated when I put the two boxes side by side and see that only one word in English has been changed from water-based lubricant to silicone-based lubricant… And none in Italian!

The following section has been amended to warn the user that this lubricant may not be used with silicone🦊toys. Rare are the manufacturers of silicone sex toys who know that their sex toys won’t move with such a lubricant…. In fact I only know of one at the moment: Love-not-war 🛒.

This product is labelled as being made in France. Its 150ml can be used for twelve months after opening.

Like the water-based lubricant, the bottle should rest on a concave base. This doesn’t guarantee the best stability, but it’s good enough. What you see on this front panel is a copy/paste of what we had on the front of the box.

On the reverse side, however, we have access to additional information that is much appreciated. Unlike Überlube, which boasted only four ingredients in its composition, here we only have two listed.

As always, I’m not a chemist by training or profession. So I’m going to try and express myself simply from what I’ve understood. I hope this doesn’t offend anyone. So there are two ingredients.

This is a type of silicone widely used in personal care products. Dimethicone creates a protective barrier on the skin, making it smooth and soft. It is often used in lotions, moisturisers and hair products… And in Encore +.

It’s an emollient (softens and smoothes the skin, adds a silky feel) as well as a hair conditioner from what I’ve read. Combined with many other products, it also helps to ‘distribute’ them better as a spreading agent.

Likewise, we seem to be pretty clean about the composition… As long as we’re talking about synthetic products and not natural ones. But natural products can also be harmful to humans.

• Cyclopentasiloxane: Concerns about bioaccumulation and environmental effects.

Well, he’s going to explain to us again that he couldn’t do the measurements because …

Well, no. There’s none to be done. No pH, because it’s not an aqueous solution. No osmolarity for the same reason. This lubricant can go into any of your orifices without destabilising its flora or posing an infectious risk.

Encore + is very liquid, it runs like water as soon as you put your head down. You have to be careful not to get it everywhere. You don’t even need to press down on the bottle to adjust the flow.

It’s quite surprising, even more so if you’ve just used Encore Histoire d’Eau, which has a composition closer to that of a gel. So you need to get ready to ‘water’ the area to be lubricated or put some in the palm of your hand and then apply it.

The lubricant feels like a silky film on the skin, it’s very pleasant and doesn’t feel oily.

The first no-go was using this lube with my (many) sex toys. With the exception of the NJoy Pure Wand🛒and the Cristal anal plug from RoseBuds (reviews of which will be published shortly), all my toys are made of silicone or TPE (penis sheaths). This limits my usual use of lubricants but not all the possibilities.

As you may have read on my review How do you choose your personal lubricant? 🦊, silicone-based lubricants are THE absolute go-to if you want to put sex toys to one side. For oral sex (even if it’s not a panacea), vaginal penetration, anal sex, masturbation alone or with others, with or without a condom… It’s simple, I’ve been able to test everything with it and it’s great. The lubricant lasts a long time, doesn’t dry out and doesn’t feel unpleasant.

You can even play with it in the shower or swimming pool. But… In the shower, be careful not to slip on it if you put it on the floor. My preference is clearly to use it for anal sex, as it makes penetration much easier.

Watching it flow, you might think that it’s not necessarily easy to steer, and that’s one of its faults. So is Uberlübe, but this one has a pump so you can choose when you want the lubricant to come out and direct it.

Apart from that, Encore + is soft and silky, and reduces friction to a bare minimum, allowing the senses to express themselves more fully.

You just need to pay attention to how you direct the bottle and then spread the lubricant on the target areas.

This lubricant has no odour. To tell you the truth, I could smell the chlorine residue after cleaning my pool a few hours earlier, rather than the lubricant, which I could smell straight from the bottle.

There’s absolutely no taste for this lubricant, or maybe my taste buds aren’t trained enough. In any case, taste-wise, there’s nothing wrong with having Encore + lubricant on your lips or tongue. I was worried about having an “unnatural” taste in my mouth, but it’s nothing of the sort.

For Encore +, I did the exercise of pouring a little of this silicone-based lubricant onto a piece of white cotton cloth. The idea was to simulate what can happen after sex, when the lubricant ends up on the sheets. After leaving it to dry, are there any traces left and, more importantly, do they get into the washing machine?

Unlike Uberlube, Soft Paris’ lubricant left much less visible traces after it had completely dried. To the naked eye, I could no longer see it. However, when the fabric was exposed to the sun, there was no doubt that the lubricant was still there.

Then came the test in the washing machine… And one of my daughters’ new red garments went into the washing machine at the same time as my test samples… I’ll let you guess what happened. In any case, this part of the test was aborted, so I’ll do it again later and keep you posted on the results.

Encore +🛒has, unless I’m mistaken, been available since at least March 2014. I can find traces of hybrid lubricants before but not of this silicone-based lubricant. Yet, in their catalogue, there seems to be mention of its presence since 2010…

Today, it’s available on the Soft Paris website for €28 a bottle. Well… It says that these are the last items in stock, and the price has even gone down to €19.60. At this price for 150ml, a litre costs around €187.

This puts it clearly below Uberlube (€285 per litre) in terms of price. So should we prefer Encore +?

What I appreciated about writing this review of Soft Paris’ Encore + silicone-based lubricant was the opportunity to compare it. With Uberlube, I was limited. It was the first silicone-based lubricant that I had really tested from many angles. Even though I’d used one before.

I tend to prefer the texture of Uberlube, which has a silkier feel. Still, the difference is felt mainly on the fingertips. For recreational use, I find it hard to tell the two apart. They seem to offer the same amount in terms of feel and reduced friction. But the Soft Paris one is more pleasant if it comes into contact with the lips (mouth).

It’s probably because of the packaging but the Soft Paris one seems more liquid, it’s more complicated to use and I had a few unwanted (temporary) stains on the sheets because I hadn’t closed the bottle properly and it dripped.

This Encore + silicone-based lubricant would clearly benefit from being packaged differently. I think that’s really the downside, but apart from that I’d definitely recommend it.