How to Clean Jewelry

aHow to Clean Jewelry - Pro Tips

Authentic Jewelry should be shiny, bright, and sparkly at all times. Unfortunately, however, your jewelry can become murky, cloudy and dirty due to a number of factors: your natural body oils, dirt and dust in the air, soap, sweat, and more.

The good news for you is that we have created the perfect guide to walk you through exactly how to clean gold jewelry, silver jewelry, precious gemstones, and rare pearls. If you are like millions of other jewelry-owners in the world, you probably are wondering how to clean jewelry without having to go to a professional jewelry repair shop. The team at Saracino Jewelry is here to make your life easier and your jewelry shinier by giving you this at-home jewelry cleaning guide. 

How to Clean Gold Jewelry

If you are interested in cleaning your gold jewelry to give it that “brand new” look and feel, the first key to success is using warm water. We also recommend having dish soap and a soft-bristled toothbrush handy.

Steps to Cleaning Gold Jewelry: 

1. Fill up a cup or bucket with warm water
2. Add dish soap to the bucket
3. Place the gold jewelry in the bucket of warm water
4. Gently brush the gold jewelry with your soft-bristled toothbrush
5. Place your newly cleaned gold jewelry on a paper towel and let it drip-dry for a couple hours or overnight. 
6. Use a gold-polishing cloth to finish your gold-cleaning routine

Alternative Options to Clean Gold Jewelry

• Use a polishing cloth impregnated with special gold-polishing chemicals.
• Put your gold jewelry in an ultrasonic
• Put your gold jewelry in a solution overnight meant to naturally clean gold

Things to Note when Cleaning Gold Jewelry

• Gold Jewelry gets foggy and dirty over time from natural body oils, sweat, moisture, dirt in the air, and many more reasons
• We recommend cleaning your gold jewelry 2 times a month if you are wearing your gold jewelry pieces daily, as this will keep your precious pieces looking brand new
• If you have a scratch or damage to the surface of the gold jewelry piece, you might need to have it buffed-out by a professional, which should not cost too much nor should it take too long to have it restored to its natural brand-new shine.
• Avoid rubbing your gold jewelry against any other metal because this can scratch the surface of your jewelry. 
• Do not use any brushes on gold jewelry pieces with stone settings because this can cause the prongs to move and diamonds, rubies, or other stones will become loose and maybe fall out. 
• You can use jewelry or eyebrow tweezers to hold your gold jewelry pieces and maneuver them around the bowl/cup of warm water and dish soap
• Make sure that the water is never at a boiling temperature when you clean your gold jewelry pieces. 

How to Clean Silver Jewelry

When it comes to cleaning silver jewelry pieces, we recommend you purchase a silver-cleaning polish. A good silver jewelry cleaning polish will have ingredients that naturally remove tarnish from the surface of the silver jewelry piece and leave a protective coating at the same time. 

We recommend using silver jewelry cleaning wipes as opposed to the liquids because it is easier to control where the cleaning solution goes. 

Steps to Cleaning Silver Jewelry:

1. Fill up a bucket or cup with warm water
2. Place silver jewelry piece in the warm water
3. Shake it around or allow warm water to run on the silver jewelry piece to get rid of debris 
4. Place the silver jewelry piece on a paper towel to dry off
5. Polish the silver jewelry piece with a wipe intended to clean silver jewelry, removing any remaining tarnish and providing a protective coat

What NOT to do when cleaning Silver Jewelry

• Do NOT use strong dish soap or any other body soap or shampoo when cleaning silver jewelry because this will cause the silver piece to oxidize, tarnish and turn brown

How to Clean Diamonds and Other Gemstones

If you are looking to clean diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, or any other gemstones, this is totally possible. To clean precious gemstones it is a similar process, the only difference would be substituting the warm tap water for seltzer water. Having carbonation really helps to loosen up any microscopic debris trapped in the setting between the prongs and the precious gemstones. 

You can brush gemstones gently with a soft-bristled toothbrush, but be careful doing this. Gold is a soft material, so you want to be sure to be gentle otherwise you could move one of the prongs which can eventually lead to a diamond being loosened up and maybe falling out.

How to Clean Pearls

The first rule when it comes to cleaning pearls is to make sure you do not soak them in any liquids because this will cause the string holding the pearls together to break over time. Since pearls are porous, unlike diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, they can easily lose their beautiful shine unless they have a clear coating.

The proper way to clean natural pearls is to place the pearl jewelry piece on a countertop and dip a cloth/towel in a mixture of warm water and shampoo and clean each pearl individually. This will be more time consuming, but it will give you the best result and ensure that you will not destroy the string holding all of the pearls together. 

We highly recommend following this Pearl Cleaning Routine when you are trying to clean turquoise or opals because they are also porous and are affected by water.