Sometimes shopping for gold wedding rings can be confusing. Should you get 14K or
18K? What does the karat of gold mean anyway? What is the difference
between white, rose, and yellow colored gold? Let us explore the
advantages and disadvantages of different colors and karats of gold
jewelry.
We'll start at the beginning. Gold has been used as
early as 2600 B.C. and shown in Egyptian hieroglyphs of the same time
period. People have spent their entire lives traveling to the ends of
the Earth in search for this precious metal.
The system of
karats simply shows the purity of gold. 24 karat gold is considered
99.9% pure and any other karat of gold can be divided by 24 to give its
percentage purity. For example, 14 karat gold is 58.3% pure. (14 / 24 =
.583) Another common example is 18 karat gold which is 75% pure. (18 /
24 = .75) The purity of any gold can be found by plugging into this
simple math formula. Hence, the higher the karat of gold, the more pure
it is, and the more expensive it is.
This begs the question of
what else makes up the other percentage of jewelry when 10K, 14K and
18K gold is most widely used in the industry?
Gold alloys are
used and created to alter the malleability, color, melting point, and
most importantly, hardness. 24K pure gold is very soft and when used in
jewelry is damaged very easily. The other percentage of jewelry in
lower karat gold is most often made of copper, giving it a red hue.
Silver and palladium is also used, along with nickel and in rare cases
iron and aluminum. High karat gold alloys are much more resistant to
corrosion and tarnish than sterling silver, but should still be
maintained and cleaned professionally and on a regular basis depending
on how often your jewelry is being worn and used.
Rose gold gets
its hue from a higher percentage of copper used in the jewelry, usually
taking place of silver. It matches some skin tones wonderfully and
contrasts all diamonds. It is also regaining popularity again in our
time.
White gold can most often be broken into two categories.
There are those that use nickel and those that use palladium to
"bleach" out the yellow.
While nickel has the strongest
bleaching abilities, a rare percentage of the population are allergic
to nickel. While Europe has developed regulatory laws stating how much
nickel may be used in jewelry, the US has not and it is important that
you consider using a jeweler that is reputable and not always just the
cheapest.
When palladium is used as the bleaching agent, there
are no allergic issues but the price goes up as it is a more precious
metal falling into the platinum group.
This informative article
is meant to educate those shopping for a wedding band. Often times the
diamond education and "The 4 C's" is pushed so much that we forget the
importance of the rest of the ring holding the diamond. With this
knowledge one can hope to find a wedding ring that will truly make them
happy forever.
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