Yellow and white gold are beautiful and durable enough for a lifetime of everyday wear. By maintaining and storing your gold jewelry properly, you can be sure it will always look its best.

•Organize your jewelry items separately, in a jewelry box or soft bag so they don't get scratched by your other jewelry.

•Clean your gold jewelry periodically in the same way you clean other fine jewelry - using jewelry cleaner or by soaking it in a mild solution of detergent-free soap and warm water then gently rubbing it with a soft cloth. This will help ensure its fine appearance and will help it last.

•Have your gold jewelry professionally cleaned once in a while. For gold jewelry set with diamonds or gemstones, be sure to do this every six months.

•Do not leave your jewelry on when doing house cleaning, gardening and other types of heavy work or manual labor.

•Try not to wear your gold jewelry around products or settings with chlorine, such as laundry products, swimming pools, and hot tubs.

•Do not handle bleach or harsh chemicals when wearing gold. These chemicals can affect the durability of white gold and also affect the luster.

•Remove your rings before washing your hands and putting lotion on. Diamonds are attracted to grease and lotion will quickly dull your diamond.

Certain household chemicals such as chlorine or bromine can affect your white gold jewelry settings and this can result in prong failure or breakage. This is because nickel – the metal alloy commonly used to give 14k and 18k white gold its strength and white color – is affected by these chemicals.

These chemicals can be found in:

• Household bleach or other laundry products
• Hot tubs
• Swimming pools

Our solution is to use a palladium white gold alloy rather than nickel white gold for all of our 14k and 18k white gold engagement and anniversary settings. While most of our engagement and anniversary rings are set with platinum prongs to avoid this problem completely, we use the palladium white gold for our white gold or two-tone gold settings to ensure the security of your gemstone and avoid any prong breakage.

To prevent abrasion and corrosion, remove your rings and jewelry before using soaps, cleaning compounds, detergents and lotions. Also, remove your ring before applying cosmetics. Not only will your rings remain in excellent condition, but your rings will also stay extremely clean. Diamonds attract grease and putting lotion on your hands while wearing your ring can cause it to dull.