How to Clean a Gold Plated Ring To Make It Shine Like New?
How Long Do Gold-Plated Rings Last?
By cleaning your gold-plated ring properly and regularly, you ensure that the shine stays on for a long and that your ring will not turn your fingers green or tarnish when worn daily.
Here we will talk about gold plating in general and add some very useful tips on how to clean your gold-plated rings. Of course, these cleaning tips can be applied to any gold-plated jewelry you want to preserve and wear for years to come.
Let’s start with the basics.
How to Take Care of Gold-Plated Rings?
Taking care of gold-plated rings is easy if you do it regularly. Here are some tips you can undertake when wearing your gold-plated rings to protect them from fading or tarnishing.
How to Keep Gold-Plated Ring From Fading?
To keep a gold-plated ring from fading, you should protect it while wearing it. Especially if you tend to wear gold-plated pieces daily.
- Don’t stack too many rings on your fingers that will cause them to rub off and scrape the gold plating on top.
- When storing your jewelry away, make sure that each gold-plated ring has its space so it’s not being scratched by other jewelry.
- Don’t expose your gold-plated rings to water unnecessarily. When washing your hands, take your rings off, and don’t let them come in contact with soap, either. Put your rings only on dry hands.
- When cooking, putting makeup on, or even spraying perfume, take your gold-plated rings off, so they don’t come in contact with liquids that are not PH-neutral and tarnish. Of course, this won’t happen overnight, but with regular and improper use as such, their golden layers will fade in time.
- Don’t wear your gold-plated rings in the gym. Sweat and friction will cause them to tarnish sooner.
- Avoid swimming in pools or the sea with your gold-plated rings. They shouldn’t come in contact with any water, especially not with chlorine water or salt water.
This may seem like a lot of rules and precautionary measures for gold-plated rings but trust us, it’s worth it. With gold-plated jewelry, you are able to wear real gold shine without breaking the bank.
What Does Gold-Plated Ring Mean?
To explain better why you need to follow our guidelines on properly wearing gold-plated jewelry, let’s dive deeper into Agapé’s gold-plating process and jewelry creation as a whole.
- Our gold-plated rings draw inspiration from ancient times, museums, excavation sites, and ancient architecture.
- Once we’ve gathered enough ideas, we 3D model our visions and turn them into a hypoallergenic brass base.
- Brass is what we use for our gold-plated rings because, unlike copper, brass does not oxidize and trigger skin allergies as easily.
- Then, the allergy-free brass surface is prepared by cleaning any dirt, rust, or oil.
- We polish the surface of each ring with ultrasonic bathing and solvents. This way, any chemical residue from the ring is removed so that it takes on the layers of gold.
- We apply an alkaline tube to give brass its consistency.
- Finally, we apply a 3-micron gold layer to each ring - a thick layer of gold that adapts to every surface and ensures the longevity of the shine.
- We rinse and dry each gold-plated ring and give the gold time to adapt to the surface of the rings.
When wondering, “what is a gold-plated ring?” through our process, you can learn more about it. It is evident that we apply enough gold on the surface of the brass base.
A 3-micron gold layer is considerably more gold than the standard 0.5-1 micron gold, which other manufacturers apply on their gold-plated rings. This way, we not only make our rings shine more and longer, but we also protect the brass from coming in contact with the skin or oxidizing and tarnishing.
Do Gold-Plated Rings Turn Green?
Gold-plated rings can turn green if you don’t take proper care of them when worn daily. We recommend cleaning your gold-plated rings once every three to six months with the following method.
The Aluminum-soda recipe
- Take a glass bowl and line it with aluminum foil. The shiny side of the foil should be on top in contact with the jewelry.
- Add one tablespoon of salt and one tablespoon of baking soda to the bowl.
- The amount of water should be enough to dissolve both powders and fully submerge your gold-plated jewelry.
- Place all pieces in this solution and leave them for 5 minutes at a time. If your jewelry is severely tarnished, you can leave it inside for up to 15 minutes or until black and yellow flakes start floating on the surface.
- These flakes are the sulfur that caused the oxidation of the gold layer, and they will be attracted to the foil, floating away from the jewelry.
- Once most of the tarnish has been removed, rub all pieces clean with a soft toothbrush.
- After the gentle scrubbing, wash each piece with lukewarm water and use a soft, lint-free cloth to pat dry.
If you wear your gold-plated jewelry daily, then this method will help keep the shine and golden layer longer.
For more frequent cleanups, we recommend investing in a soft, lint-free cloth and polishing the gold-plated rings every month or so. Don’t use any polishing chemicals or rubbing alcohol, or even polishing cloths because they will scrub off the gold plating.
How to Clean a Gold-Plated Ring | FAQ
Here are some of the questions we get on our Instagram page frequently. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have further questions regarding our gold-plated jewelry. We’re always happy to help.
How to Tell if a Ring Is Gold-Plated?
You can tell if a ring is gold-plated if you scratch your ring and notice a line of demarcation in the scratched area. This is where the gold plating ends, and the base metal begins. We don’t recommend doing this because gold-plated jewelry is still worth wearing, and scratching it needlessly will cause its layer to break sooner.
Another way to tell if a ring is gold-plated is by its markings ‘GP,’ ‘GE,’ or ‘HGE.’
The first two stand for electroplated with a thin layer of gold, while the ‘HGE’ stands for ‘Heavy Gold Electroplate’ or ‘High Grade Electroplate,’ which means the piece is gold-plated with a slightly thicker layer.
Are Gold-Plated Rings Bad?
Gold-plated rings are not bad to buy or wear. They are as shiny as solid gold rings, yet they don’t break the bank and allow you to invest in multiple pieces you can wear and change every day.
Do 14k Gold-Plated Rings Tarnish?
14k gold-plated rings can tarnish. In fact, any gold-plated ring can tarnish whether it’s 14k, 18k, or 22k. The important thing is to take proper care of your gold-plated rings when worn daily by following our instructions. That way you will prolong the life of your gold-plated jewelry and wear them for a very long time.