What’s The Difference Between Hemp Oil and CBD Oil?

Hemp Oil vs. CBD - We Explain All

There’s often confusion about the distinction between Hemp Oil and CBD Oil. This isn't surprising, after all, they both come from the same cannabis plant (hemp), so what’s the difference and does it matter?

Well, if you’re after CBD and other cannabinoids, the distinction is significant.

Hemp seed oil or cannabis sativa seed oil does not naturally contain any CBD.

Hemp seed oil is much cheaper to make than CBD, so unfortunately there are some rogue businesses out there who mislead people by insinuating that their hemp oil is CBD - usually by adding a mg weight to the label.

Unfortunately, 1000mg hemp oil is just that - 1 gram of hemp oil, no CBD. You see a lot of this on Amazon for example.

What is hemp oil made from? Hemp oil is extracted from the seeds of the cannabis plant by cold-pressing them - similar to how olive oil is made. In fact, you can use it in the same way as olive oil!

Does regular hemp oil contain CBD? No. Hemp oil is high in antioxidants and essential fatty acids like omegas-3 and -6, but the seeds of the hemp plant contain no CBD, THC or other cannabinoids, so hemp seed oil has none in either.

This is why hemp oil is more commonly marketed and has been found on supermarket shelves for years in the cooking oils aisle, as historically it has been considered legally very different to other cannabis plant extracts.

Hemp oil is great for your skin (that's why we use it as an ingredient in our face oil, along with CBD) and for use in cooking, but hemp oil doesn’t have the properties of CBD (cannabidiol) or other cannabinoids.

CBD oil, and full-spectrum hemp oil by comparison, is extracted from the flowers and buds of the hemp plant, where the trichomes are rich in cannabinoids.

This meant that until recently CBD oil could not be legally extracted and sold, as the flower is also where THC (the cannabinoid that gets you high) comes from.

The law made no distinction between high and low THC strains of cannabis (low THC strains are also known as industrial hemp) and considered any extract from the cannabis flower as a scheduled drug - even when industrial hemp has very low natural THC levels.

When that law changed in the UK and around the world, CBD began to become more readily available.

We extract KLORIS CBD oil from organic-grown European Hemp that is naturally low in THC (less than 0.2% - the legal limit for hemp in Europe) using a process called supercritical CO2 extraction. This cleanly extracts the CBD and other cannabinoids from the hemp flower using carbon dioxide and leaves no nasty chemicals behind as other extraction methods can. We then distill the extract to produce a clean-tasting, beautiful oil with no THC.

So in summary, CBD oil is a very different substance from hemp oil, even though it originates from the same plant. Beware of confusing marketing pretending that they’re the same. If a product contains CBD, it should tell you exactly how much on the label and the ingredients list, and be able to provide lab reports to prove it.

Find out more about CBD fact and fiction in our mythbusting guide.