Jewelry Care and Jewelry Cleaning Tips

In this guide to jewelry care and cleaning tips you'll find:

- How properly care for your jewelry

- What to do and what not to do when cleaning your jewelry

- How to properly store your jewelry

Although we try to be thorough, this list does not cover everything.　 This list covers the most common improper practices used to clean jewelry and provides guidance on better ways to handle those most precious and treasured items, your jewelry!

 

Golden (or silver!) rule for taking good care of your jewelry:

The best thing you can do to keep your jewelry sparkly and beautiful is to gently wipe off excess make-up and skin oils after each wearing. Use a nub free, 100% cotton cloth to gently wipe the piece clean using light touch with your fingers only.　 Then immediately place your jewelry in jeweler's tissue or a soft bag.

 

Silver and Preventing Tarnish:

To help retard tarnish on sterling silver jewelry, wrap the piece in jeweler's tissue paper after you've wiped it off and place it inside a plastic zip lock bag and seal.　 Silver tarnishes when air, especially moist air, comes in contact with the surface of your piece.　 Since it is nearly impossible to remove all air, putting your jewelry in a zip lock bag will at least limit the exposure.　 The jeweler's tissue helps reduce the moisture and also absorbs acids.

 

Cleaning Silver:

Sterling silver is actually very soft.　 It is easily damaged by a fingernail or by using the wrong kind of fabric to polish it.　 Silver is actually very easy to care for.　 To clean very dirty sterling silver or very tarnished sterling silver:

To remove fingerprints, light grease or dirt, add a small amount of mild liquid soap to a half cup of warm water, soak 2-3 minutes, rinse thoroughly with clean water and dry completely before storing in an air tight plastic bag.

Although stones may appear to be hard, many are not.　 Not only that, many precious and semi-precious stones are porous.　 For these reasons, be very careful when using any soaking method to clean jewelry that has soft stones such as amber, lapis lazuli, or turquoise. Extended soaking in any solution may harm the polish on the stone. Chlorine bleach is always a bad idea.

To remove excessive tarnish, polish with a 100% cotton cloth and a good nonabrasive metal cleaner. Be sure to remove any remnants of the cleaner from gemstones and rinse thoroughly with clean water.

 

Keeping your Jewerly Sparkly and Shiny

If you only read one line in this guide, hopefully this is it: never use anything but 100% cotton as a polishing cloth.　 People commonly, and mistakenly, use fabrics that contain polyester and other coarse materials. These materials may impart fine scratches in the metal, especially on sterling silver.

Again, sterling silver is a very soft metal.　 The polished apperance comes from a silversmith's efforts to sand, buff, and polish the surface to a perfectly flat finish.　 When even minor scratches occur, as seen under a microscope, the surface looks like the ragged edge of a saw blade and light is bounced in and around those scratches like a voice echoing in the Alps. An unmarred surface allows the light to be bounced back smoothly, with no echoes, and results in a highly reflective surface.　 It's that highly reflective surface on your jewelry that you want to preserve.

 

Important Warnings about the Care of Fine Jewelry

Remember what we said about bleach?　 Bleach can be very tricky sometimes.　 Many household cleaners, many more than most people think, contain bleach or bleach components.　 Always remove your rings, bracelets, and fine jewelry before using any product that contains bleach! Bleach can cause gold and other metal alloys to breakdown leaving the metal irreparably damaged. This includes swimming pools and bathing in hot tubs as chlorine products are added to prevent bacteria growth.

Remember what we said about bleach?　 Bleach can be very tricky sometimes.　 Many household cleaners, many more than most people think, contain bleach or bleach components.　 Always remove your rings, bracelets, and fine jewelry before using any product that contains bleach! Bleach can cause gold and other metal alloys to breakdown leaving the metal irreparably damaged. This includes swimming pools and bathing in hot tubs as chlorine products are added to prevent bacteria growth.

 

Jeweler's Cloths

If you normally use specially purchased jeweler's cloths to keep your jewelry clean and shiny, be sure to use fresh cloths, or at the very least find an unused portion of the cloth,　 since the dirt and grit left on the cloth from a previous use will now leave scrapes and pits in the piece you are trying to clean and polish.

 

Toothpaste and Other Abrasives

We can sum this up in one sentence.　 If you care about your jewelry and you want to preserve it's luster and shine, do not use toothpaste or other abrasives to clean it.

You will find countless websites that recommend toothpaste as a cleaner.

Ignore them.　 No worthy jewelry would ever do this or recommend this.

Toothpaste is great for your teeth.　 But the enamel on your teeth is one of the hardest substances on the planet.　 Your jewelry isn't made of tooth enamel.　 Toothpaste and other abrasives can damage the surface of the metal requiring the skill of a professional to buff and refinish.　 Toothpaste will also scuff the surface on amber, lapis, turquoise and other soft stones resulting in the fine polish which was produced by the skilled lapidary to be permanently marred.　 The only way to repair this is to further buff and polish the stones, which is time-consuming, expensive, and may end up making the stones smaller and less appealing than they were originally.

 

Ultrasonic Cleaners

Ultrasonic cleaners are great for cleaning some jewelry but they can damage many gemstones and the chemicals are not recommended for pearls and many other fine stones. Repeated use can also loosen the settings and you could lose your precious gems.　 Be sure to follow the instructions on for your ultrasonic cleaner, paying close attention to the kinds of metals and stones that can be cleaned using the device.

 

Other Common Chemicals and Solutions to Avoid

Stay away from bleach (see above)!　 You should also avoid denatured alcohol, turpentine, acetone, and ammonia, which can also cause significant harm. These chemicals can dull or even pit the surface on softer gemstones. Petroleum based products can actually "melt" amber if allowed to remain on the stone and they can do significant damage to pearls.

 

Gems, precious stones, and semiprecious stones that need special care

Opals

Opals require special care. Never use an ultrasonic, never use chemicals and avoid heat. Don't put your opal ring on the window sill when washing your hands or the dishes as strong sunlight can dry out the water in opals which could cause hazing or color change.

Pearls

Be extremely careful of scratching your pearls. Perfumes and household chemicals can wear away the nacre or cause color change to your pearls.

Other Soft Stones

Soft stones like lapis, malachite, turquoise, amber and opals can easily be scratched by pin stems and the edges of other jewelry. Protect pieces with these gemstones by wrapping them in jeweler's tissue and storing separately.

About Thea Gomez

Thea Gomez designs and crafts handmade sterling silver jewelry made with semiprecious stones, freshwater pearls, and Swarovski crystals.  To sign up for her newsletter just fill out the form below:

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