Caring for Your Jewelry

You found a piece of jewelry you love and want to cherish for years to come – congratulations! Caring for your jewelry isn’t difficult, but it is a necessary activity to ensure that you really can cherish the pieces you love for years and years.

As a general rule, all jewelry should be treated and stored with care.  This is the reason jewelry boxes are generally lined with soft fabrics and cushions.  If you haven’t put much thought into storing your best pieces, this is the first step.

Once you have somewhere safe to store your jewelry, you need to consider how often to clean each piece and what the best cleaning method is for the material.  This is especially important for gold and silver jewelry (two of the most common metals).

For gold jewelry, use a solution of warm water and detergent-free soap and wash gold gently with a soft-bristled brush (a dull tooth brush works well). Store gold pieces separately in soft cloth bags or original boxes to protect them from the exposure to harsh daily elements. Keep your gold jewelry away from harsh chemicals such as chlorine and cleaning fluids. This will reduce daily abrasions and prolong gold’s luster.

For silver jewelry, care should also be taken to prevent silver tarnish buildup, a dulling that naturally occurs when silver reacts with sulfur or hydrogen sulfide in the ambient air. To clean your silver, use polishes formulated specifically to remove tarnish. You can find fine silver polishes, solutions, or cloths appropriate to remove tarnish at most hardware stores or specialty craft stores. Tarnish is most easily removed when it first becomes visible.

While you should regularly clean your jewelry at home, we recommend a yearly professional cleaning for the pieces you wear the most or are most important to you.  During this cleaning, we not only use a professional quality cleaning process that is extremely difficult to replicate at home but we also inspect your jewelry for any early warning signs of problems.  For example, if the setting of your ring has become loose we can help repair it before you loose your center stone.

Caring for timepieces is also important, but can be much more complex than the simple cleaning methods discussed in this blog.  Because each timepiece is different, please be sure to discuss care with your salesperson to ensure the best methods are used.

While regular care for your jewelry is not difficult, it is important to keep your jewelry looking just as good as it did they day you bought it.