Do bath emollients prevent eczema in children?

What the evidence says

Bath emollients are oils, oat extracts, or other moisturizing products added to bathwater. Many parents assume soaking in these products protects a baby's skin from eczema, a condition that causes dry, itchy, inflamed patches. But good quality research does not support this.

The largest study on bath additives, called the BATHE trial, followed 483 children aged 1 to 11 who already had eczema. Half added emollient to their bathwater for a year, and half did not. Both groups still used regular moisturizer on the skin and normal eczema treatment. The trial found no meaningful difference in eczema control between the two groups.

A separate and very relevant study, the BEEP trial, tested a related question: could daily moisturizer applied directly to the skin (not in the bath) prevent eczema from developing in high-risk babies. Nearly 1,400 newborns with a family history of eczema, asthma, or hay fever were randomly assigned to either daily emollient or standard skin care alone for their first year. By age two, eczema rates were almost identical between groups. There was also a signal that the emollient group had more skin infections.

A Canadian medical journal review of these findings concluded that bath emollient additives don't add any extra benefit once a child is already using moisturizer directly on the skin. Canadian guidance does support using plain, fragrance-free moisturizer as a soap substitute and applying it directly to skin, since that helps manage eczema flares once they happen, but this is different from claiming baths with emollients added can stop eczema from starting.

That said, a new trial (CASCADE) was published in 2025 with a different finding - that daily emollient use did decrease the risk of eczema development in those who did not have a family history of eczema, and those who had a dog in the household.

So the honest answer for parents is: skip the special bath products marketed for eczema prevention. If you want to support your baby's skin, applying a plain moisturizer directly after bathing is the approach with more consistent research behind it for managing eczema, though even that has not been shown to prevent eczema from developing in the first place.