Polishing Gold Jewelry at Home
The easiest way to polish your gold rings and other jewelry is to buff them at home using a polishing cloth, which you can buy at most stores.
Note that this method can help you polish out only very light scratches – if your jewelry is scratched more deeply, it is better to have it polished by a professional.
If your gold jewelry has lots of scratches, it is best to have it polished by a professional.
Before using a polishing cloth on your jewelry, make sure it is clean. You can wipe the jewelry with a damp cloth dipped in soapy water.
After you’ve cleaned your piece and dried it, you can wipe it with the polishing cloth to shine it.
If your gold jewelry has gemstones, do not rub them with the polishing cloth as you may damage them.
Professional Gold Polishing
If your gold jewelry has lots of scratches, some of which are also deep, it is best to have it polished by a professional.
Jewelers use polishing materials that are more abrasive than your regular polishing cloth, and that’s why professional buffing is more effective.
The problem with polishing: One of the inevitable downsides of polishing gold jewelry is that the process involves removing a tiny layer off the piece’s surface so that it can become even again.
This is why too many polishing sessions can wear down your gold jewelry and even weaken it.
How Often to Polish Gold Jewelry
Because of the abrasive nature of polishing, you shouldn’t go to your jeweler to have your pieces buffed every time you notice a couple of visible scratches. In general, you shouldn’t have your gold jewelry polished more often than once or twice a year.
If you don’t wear your rings or other jewelry every day, polishing them once every two or three years may also work well for you. It’s best to not have your jewelry polished until it is scratched extensively.
As for buffing your pieces with a polishing cloth, you can do so more often since these cloths are not that abrasive – once a month or once every two to three months is an acceptable frequency for this kind of polishing.
How to Avoid Scratches on Gold Jewelry
It goes without saying that you should protect your gold pieces from hits and bumps in order to avoid scratches. Here are some additional ideas that you may find useful:
Buy gold jewelry that doesn’t scratch easily.
Since gold is one of the softest metals, the higher the karat of a jewelry piece, the softer it is. In contrast, lower karat jewelry is harder and more durable as it contains less gold.
You can go with a lower karat for pieces that will be more likely to be scratched or damaged – for example, rings and bracelets – and choose higher karats for jewelry that will be less exposed to the risk of damage (e.g., necklaces or pendants).
Wear the less durable pieces less often.
You can also match how often you wear a piece to its durability.
For example, wear your high-karat gold jewelry (18K or 20K) less often to protect it from wearing down quickly. Instead, use your 10K or 14K pieces for everyday wear.
Should You Polish White Gold Jewelry?
White gold is actually made of yellow gold mixed with a white metal. However, even when such an alloy is made, it still has a yellow tint. That’s why it is usually covered with a layer of rhodium, whose color is actually the color of white gold that people are used to seeing when looking at jewelry.
You should not have your white gold jewelry polished too often.
So, in reality, white gold is a yellow gold alloy covered with rhodium; beneath it, your white gold jewelry is actually yellowish.
Why Polishing White Gold Can Be Bad
While rhodium plating makes white gold lustrous and white, it is not the best candidate for polishing exactly because of this coating.
Whenever you take your jewelry to a professional to have it polished, your piece is buffed using an abrasive material that removes a tiny layer off the jewelry’s surface.
And as you might guess, every time your white gold piece is polished, this process takes away part of its rhodium plating, little by little.
If the top layer of your white gold is already worn down after a long time of wearing your jewelry, polishing it can remove the little plating it still has, exposing the layer beneath, which is yellowish.
Even if it’s not heavily worn, your white gold may have deep scratches, whose removal would require heavier polishing, which could remove significant parts of the rhodium plating.
What to Do If Your White Gold Is Scratched
But if white gold is not the best candidate for polishing, what should you do if it does get scratched?
First of all, you should not have your white gold jewelry polished too often. Instead, wait until there are a lot of scratches, and then take it to a jeweler to have it buffed.
In the meantime, you can use a polishing cloth to keep your white gold jewelry shiny.
How Often Should You Polish White Gold?
In general, polishing white gold more than once or twice a year will cause it to lose its rhodium plating more quickly. In most cases, having your jewelry polished a couple of times a year is enough.
If you wear your pieces very often, though, they will scratch more quickly, and you can polish them more often. However, in such a case, be prepared to pay more money to have the color of your white gold restored when the plating wears off.
How to Restore the Color of White Gold
So, now that the lower layer of your white gold is exposed and your piece looks yellowish, is there something you can do to make it white again?
Actually, yes – you can always have your white gold re-plated with rhodium. Almost every jeweler provides such a service for a fee. Keep in mind, however, that this might cost you $20-$50 and more.
Before you decide where to have your jewelry re-plated, be sure to ask the jeweler about the method used and how thick the plating will be (the thinner it is, the shorter it will last).
