Homemade Powerwash

Dawn Power Wash works. It works really well. When you read the ingredient list, you can see exactly why. You can also see that none of it is magic. It is just three kinds of cleaners mixed together, and you can buy all of them yourself.

This article shows you what is inside the bottle. Then it shows you how to make the same thing at home for about a third of the price. At the end, I test my version against the real thing on a pan of burnt-on cheese.

What is actually in Dawn Power Wash

Here is the full ingredient list, straight off the bottle:

Alcohol Denat., C10-16 Alkyldimethylamine Oxide, Dipropylene Glycol Butyl Ether, Ethanolamine, Fragrances, Hexyl Ethoxylate, Phenoxyethanol, PPG-26, Sodium Citrate, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Tetrasodium Glutamate Diacetate, Water.

It looks scary, but almost everything on that list does one of three jobs. Every dish cleaner has to do some mix of these three things to grease.

Job 1: lift grease (surfactants)

Surfactants are the main cleaners in any dish soap. The word is just short for "surface-active agents." Each surfactant is a tiny molecule with two ends. One end sticks to grease. The other end sticks to water. When a bunch of them surround a drop of grease, they form a tiny ball called a micelle. The grease-loving ends point in, and the water-loving ends point out. Now plain water can rinse the whole ball away.

So the grease does not melt away. It gets wrapped up and carried off. In Dawn Power Wash, the surfactants are Sodium Laureth Sulfate, the amine oxide, and hexyl ethoxylate.

Job 2: fight hard water (chelating agents)

Hard water is water with a lot of minerals in it, mostly calcium and magnesium. Those minerals soak in from rock underground. The problem is that they stick to the surfactants and shut them off. So your soap gets weaker before it ever reaches the pan.

Chelating agents fix this. The name comes from the Greek word for "claw," which is a good way to picture it. They grab the calcium and magnesium first and hold on tight. That keeps the minerals away from the surfactants. Dawn Power Wash uses two of these claw molecules: sodium citrate and tetrasodium glutamate diacetate.

Job 3: dissolve grease (solvents)

Surfactants lift grease. Solvents dissolve it. Those are two different things, and tough baked-on grease usually needs both. A solvent is just a liquid that can melt another substance into itself, the way water melts sugar.

There is a simple rule for solvents: "like dissolves like." Watery solvents dissolve watery stuff. Oily solvents dissolve oily stuff. Dawn Power Wash has both kinds. It has a glycol ether, which is an oily solvent that does the heavy grease-cutting. And it has denatured alcohol, which is a watery solvent that helps everything mix and then dries fast. This is a big reason the spray cuts grease faster than plain soap.

So Dawn Power Wash does all three jobs, and it does them well. There is no missing ingredient. That leads to the real question. If it is this good, why make your own?

Why make it yourself

Two reasons. It costs less, and you know exactly what is in it.

A Power Wash refill costs about $4 for 16 oz. Our version costs about $1.20 for the same size, and it gets cheaper the more you make (full math below). We also swap in two food-grade solvents: isopropyl alcohol, and d-limonene, an oily cleaner made from citrus peels. This is not because Dawn's ingredients are unsafe. They are perfectly safe. It is just that you can do the same three jobs with a shorter, simpler list you mixed yourself.

The recipe, ingredient by ingredient

Warm water at 110°F: the base

Water is the base that carries everything else. You want it at about 110°F (43°C). That is warm bath water, not boiling. Warm water helps the sodium citrate dissolve all the way. But it is not so hot that it makes the alcohol evaporate before it can mix in.

Sodium citrate (1 tsp): the hard water fighter

This is the one ingredient that depends on where you live. We add it because you are mixing the spray with your own tap water, and in much of the country that tap water is hard. The sodium citrate grabs the calcium and magnesium in your water. That way those minerals cannot weaken the soap before the spray even hits a dish.

Sodium citrate is just the salt form of citric acid, the sour stuff in lemons. You might know it from cooking. It is the same thing that makes cheese sauce smooth and stretchy instead of clumpy.

If you live in one of these hard water states, this ingredient is really pulling its weight:

Hardest water: AZ, NV, UT, NM, TX, OK, KS, IN, WI
Hard water: NE, WY, CO, SD, MN, ID, CA, FL

Soft water areas (the Pacific Northwest, New England, much of the Southeast) can use less. But a teaspoon never hurts. So the recipe keeps it simple and includes it for everyone.

Dawn Original dish soap (3 tbsp): the surfactants

This is the grease-lifting base. The surfactants in it grab grease so water can rinse it away.

It does not have to be Dawn. Any good dish soap has the same kind of surfactants and will work fine. We pick Dawn Original because it is strong, it is the same in every bottle, and you can find it in almost any store. If you trust another brand, use it. Just pick a regular liquid dish soap. Skip the "free and clear" or moisturizing kinds, because those add hand lotion that waters down the cleaning power.

91% isopropyl alcohol (2 tbsp): the helper and streak-stopper

Isopropyl alcohol (IPA for short) is not the grease dissolver here. That job belongs to d-limonene. IPA helps in two other ways. First, it is a co-solvent, which is a fancy word for a helper liquid. It lets the oily d-limonene blend into the watery base instead of splitting apart like oil and vinegar. Second, it dries fast and leaves nothing behind, so you get no streaks. IPA is a watery-type solvent, so it can wipe out light stuff like protein, sugar, and thin films. But it is weak against heavy, oily grease. This is the same job the denatured alcohol does in the real Power Wash.

Why 91% and not 70%? The 91% kind has less water in it. Less water means it dries faster and mixes better. The 70% kind is made for killing germs, and the extra water there is on purpose, to keep it wet on a surface longer. For cleaning, you want the opposite: a fast, clean dry-off that leaves no streaks.

D-limonene (1 tsp): the grease dissolver

D-limonene is a natural oil pressed from citrus peels. It is what gives oranges their fresh smell. More important, it is an oily solvent, and it is our swap for the glycol ether in the original.

Here is why it works. Grease is oily, and d-limonene is oily. Like dissolves like, so they melt right into each other. This is different from what surfactants do. Surfactants wrap around grease from the outside. D-limonene actually blends into it. For heavy, baked-on grease, this is the part that does what soap alone cannot.

Add the d-limonene last, and swirl it in gently. Do not shake. It does not mix into water as easily as the other parts, the way oil floats on top of water. Shaking makes it foam up and split apart. The foaming bottle adds the bubbles for you when you press the pump.

What it actually costs

Prices below are as of June 14, 2026 and are subject to change. The links are affiliate links. Yields are rounded estimates based on standard container sizes.

The homemade spray costs about $1.20 per 16 oz bottle. A Dawn Power Wash refill costs about $4 for the same size. Here is where every penny goes.

You also need something to spray it from. A foaming spray bottle costs about $10 once and lasts a long time. Or you can skip it and just refill an empty Dawn Power Wash bottle, since that is already a foaming sprayer.

Why the upfront cost is misleading

Buying all four ingredients at once costs about $43. Next to a $5 bottle of Dawn, that sounds like a lot. But it is not, because most of that money buys big containers that make many bottles.

The only thing you buy again and again is the Dawn. Everything else you buy once and forget about for months. Your real cost lands around $1.20 a bottle. You make your money back by the third bottle. After that, you save about 70 percent every time you refill.

How do you know it works?

Talk is cheap. So I tested my spray against the real thing, side by side, on the same pan.

I melted shredded cheese onto a stainless steel pan and cooked it until it burned and stuck hard to the metal. I scraped off the loose burnt chunks, so both sides started the same. Then I split the pan down the middle. Dawn Power Wash went on the left ("Original"). My formula went on the right ("Homemade").

To keep it fair, both sides got the exact same treatment:

• The same amount of spray on each side
• 10 minutes sitting, with no touching
• Exactly 10 scrubs per side, same sponge, same pressure
• Wiped clean and compared

The result: both sides came out about the same. Each one lifted most of the burnt cheese in one round. Each one left a faint stain that a second pass would clean up. My cheap homemade spray kept up with a product built by a team of chemists. That is the whole point. You are not giving up cleaning power to save money. You are paying about a third of the price for the same three jobs.

Safety

One last tip: rinse your pans well with hot water after you clean them. This is true for any dish soap, store-bought or homemade. You are washing the pan, not flavoring it.

Why the order matters

The five steps go in this order for chemistry reasons, not just to be fussy.

1. Dissolve the sodium citrate in warm water first. It needs to be working before the soap goes in. If you add soap first, the minerals in your tap water start shutting it down before the citrate can grab them.
2. Let it cool to room temperature before adding the alcohol. Hot water makes the alcohol evaporate too soon, before it can mix in. It also puts more fumes in the air for no reason.
3. Add the Dawn third, and swirl gently. The soap now goes into clean, mineral-free water and works at full power.
4. Add the alcohol fourth, and swirl gently. The alcohol is the helper, so it goes in before the d-limonene and spreads out, ready to catch it.
5. Add the d-limonene last. Swirl only, do not shake. Shaking makes it foam and split. The foaming bottle adds the bubbles when you pump it.

Why the use tips matter

Spray on warm pans. Warm grease is thinner and runnier. (The science word is lower viscosity, which just means how thick and slow a liquid is.) Thinner grease is easier to dissolve and lift. A warm pan also speeds everything up, so the d-limonene and alcohol soak into the grease faster.

Wait 5 minutes before scrubbing. Give it time to work. The d-limonene dissolves grease slowly, much slower than the few seconds it takes to spray it on. The surfactants also need time to creep into the grease and surround it. If you spray and scrub right away, you wipe it off before it finishes the job.

Rinse with hot water only. Cold water makes the dissolved grease harden again on the pan. Hot water keeps the grease melted and runny, so it rinses straight off.