Jewellery Care
The Nature of Precious Metal
Precious metals like gold, silver, and platinum may seem indestructible, but it’s important to remember they are soft. When wearing your fine jewellery, be careful while performing certain tasks. Hitting your gemstone or jewellery can bend or break the claws holding the stone in place. This can also cause chipping or stone loss.
Certain activities are at a high risk of damaging your jewellery. You should remove your rings before lifting weights, playing sports, gardening, and completing housework to avoid knocks and scratches. Chemicals from swimming pools, soaps, lotions, and perfumes can all damage jewellery and increase the premature deterioration of the metal.
Janina’s Best Jewellery Tip: The more often jewellery is worn and the more complex the jewellery is, the more maintenance and care it will require.
Janina's Recommendations
Gemstone Settings
Prongs, claws, and channels hold your gemstones in place. These components wear down over time and require periodic refurbishment to rebuild the metal that supports your stones. This prevents costly gemstone loss or damage.
Diamond & Gemstone Durability
While diamonds are the hardest natural substance, all gemstones – including diamonds – can chip or break if they receive a physical blow. Every gemstone has a hardness measurement. Keeping this hardness scale in mind is helpful to understand how you should wear – and care – for your jewellery.
Insurance & Appraisals
When purchasing jewellery, it’s wise to consider additional coverage. While manufacturer warranties cover defects in jewellery, they won’t cover accidental damage or loss. Often, when applying for coverage, you will need the proper documentation – such as an appraisal or a detailed receipt – to show the value of your jewellery.
Rhodium Plating
Rhodium plating is the bright white coating applied to most white gold jewellery to brighten its colour. The natural warm colour of the white gold underneath will eventually be revealed as the rhodium plating wears down. To keep that brightness, rhodium plating can be reapplied to keep your jewellery looking like new.
Chains, Pendants, Bracelets & Earrings
When jewellery allows for movement, it’s likely to break down over time. Chain ends, clasps, pendant bails, and other dangling components should be built back up periodically. Clasps and earring backs should also be cleaned and tightened regularly for security.
Tarnish
Jewellery tarnish is a thin layer of corrosion caused by the outermost layer of metal undergoing a chemical reaction. Silver is most susceptible to tarnishing, but gold can also tarnish depending on the added alloys. Moisture, salty air, certain chemicals, and products containing sulfur can increase the appearance of tarnish. To reduce tarnish, jewellery can be cleaned with a polishing cloth, silver cleaning formulas, or professional cleaning and polishing.
Soldering Rings Together
Wedding rings and engagement rings – as well as other ring stacks – can be soldered together to prevent the rings from wearing into each other. Some individuals prefer unsoldered rings to provide flexibility in how they are worn; however, more maintenance is required to prevent irreversible damage to rings.
Cleaning
Rings and other jewellery should be cleaned regularly to avoid damage. To clean jewellery at home, you can scrub it delicately with a very soft brush in lukewarm soapy water. Then, you can carefully rinse it in lukewarm water and wipe it with a soft cloth.
We recommend professional cleaning at Janina’s once a year to keep your rings and other jewellery as safe and protected as possible.
Jewellery Inspection
How often your pieces require jewellery maintenance and inspection depends on the complexity of the piece of jewellery, how often it’s worn, and how hard it is worn. As a general guideline, jewellery should be inspected every 12 months or after a potential trauma.
For items purchased at Janina’s, jewellery cleaning inspection is complementary and completed at no additional charge.