Cleaning jewellery

Sometimes jewellery becomes less beautiful over time. It gets tarnished, for example, by make-up or oils from your skin. Cleaning your jewellery is the way to make your necklace, earrings or bracelets shine again!

We give tips for cleaning and maintaining your jewellery so you can enjoy your personal Minitials jewellery as long as possible! These tips are general. Always check that the chosen cleaning method suits all the materials present in your jewellery.

Cleaning jewellery with cloth

The simplest and most familiar method for cleaning jewellery is to dip a cloth in warm (not hot!) water and then gently rub it over your jewellery. You can also use a small amount of Dreft here.

This method is very suitable when you have ‘normal’ tarnish on your jewellery. This tarnish, for example, comes from make-up or oils from your hair or skin.

In addition to a cloth, you can also use a soft toothbrush to remove tarnish from your jewellery. The small bristles of a toothbrush will help you clean in the smallest corners. Your jewellery will shine beautifully again!

Note: do not use a microfibre cloth. This is because this kind of cloth contains all kinds of fibres. When you rub this on a necklace or bracelet, it can scratch the gold. Therefore, always use a soft cloth for jewellery polishing.

Good polishing cloth or liquid gold polish

The advantage of gold is that it does not oxidise, as silver does. Silver thereby gets a much darker colour over time, so silver jewellery needs to be cleaned more often.

However, gold can also darken. Should this happen, we recommend cleaning your jewellery with a special gold polishing cloth. Such a cloth contains a polish that is especially suitable for gold. When you rub the cloth over your jewellery, this special polish is released.

It is also possible to buy liquid gold polish. The advantage of this is that you can soak your jewellery in the gold polish for a while. Afterwards, rinse your jewellery with warm (not hot!) water, and dry it with a soft cloth.

Note: jewellery with processed gemstones or diamonds should not be soaked in gold polish. The colour of the gemstones can be affected by the chemicals in the gold polish.

Other methods of cleaning

There are many different methods for cleaning jewellery. For example, you can clean jewellery with an ultrasonic device. You can also clean your gold jewellery in a bath, if you use suitable agents for this such as green soap or special soap for gold.

Discolouration in white gold

White gold is a different story. To create the colour of white gold, your jewellery is rhodium-plated. This means that a thin layer of rhodium is applied over the gold, which creates the unique colour. This layer of rhodium can unfortunately wear off over the years. In that case, the underlying colour of yellow gold comes out a bit more.

This discolouration cannot be removed with jewellery cleaning. To regain the original white gold colour, you can have the jewellery re- rhodinated at Minitials for a small fee.

Cleaning jewellery? Don’t do this:

You can find all kinds of methods for jewellery cleaning online. Yet not every method is equally suitable. Cleaning gold jewellery with cola is one example. Coke is fairly aggressive for your jewellery.

It easily removes rust or stubborn stains, making it seem like a fine cleaning method. Still, it is better not to use cola, as it can also affect the colour of processed gemstones in your jewellery. You don’t want that to happen!

We also sometimes hear that people use toothpaste for cleaning jewellery. We advise against this. Toothpaste contains a lot of chemicals that can cause scratches. The same goes for baking soda, which will not improve the quality of your gold jewellery. Baking soda has an abrasive effect that will scratch your jewellery.

Don’t clean your jewellery too often

This may sound contradictory, but it is not good to clean your jewellery too often. This is because when you rub your jewellery (with a cloth, for example), you are in effect removing a layer of gold from your jewellery.

This layer is very thin and will not be visible to the naked eye, especially not after cleaning your jewellery once or twice. But when you do this very often, your jewellery may wear out extra. So it is not good for jewellery maintenance to clean it too often!

Jewellery maintenance: this is how gold stays its best

We conclude with some tips for preserving your jewellery. Good to know is that you can always wear Minitials’ 18-carat gold jewellery, but keep a close eye on the following tips for the optimal preservation of your jewellery So you don’t have to clean it too often, and you will enjoy your personal Minitials jewellery for years to come.

• Wear your jewellery only when you already have all your make-up and perfume on. That way you are least likely to have a negative effect on your jewellery.
• Do not spray perfume directly on your jewellery
• Take off your jewellery when cleaning the house with chemical detergents or products. These chemicals are not good for gold.
• Use a storage box when you are not wearing your jewellery. This way they are protected from dust or minor accidents.