Not yellow like an omelette, but it is yellow. It appears white in a jewellery store, and it costs less than platinum, but over time white χρυση λιρα τιμη μαυρη αγορα may return to its original colour. Your white gold jewellery could need to be whitened again and again, a process that will make a bigger dent in your savings than a platinum ring would.
To understand what’s going on, first you need to learn how gold is used in jewellery. I will also explain the differences between “9 karat,” “14 karat,” and “18 karat” gold, and compare gold to other similar metals such as Palladium, Platinum, and Silver.
PURE GOLD
Gold, naturally, is a soft malleable metal with an intense yellow colour.
Pure gold is often considered “too” yellow for most people’s tastes, and its softness makes for very delicate jewellery in its pure form. Pure (24k) gold jewellery is much too soft to protect a solitaire diamond, or for any piece of jewellery that will be worn frequently.
So, for these very good reasons jewellers will mix other metals into gold, creating alloys. The metals they choose to mix with gold create different colours – allowing for some crazy combinations such as green, red, and purple gold. Popular colours are rose gold, yellow gold, and white gold.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF GOLD
- Yellow Gold: Gold in its pure form is yellow. Yellow gold is combined with metals such as copper and zinc to reduce its price, increase durability, and tone down its yellow colour.
- White Gold: White gold is an alloy of yellow gold and at least one white metal (often palladium.) Almost all white gold is plated with rhodium, which I will explain in a bit. There is no such thing as pure white gold, since it would be yellow.
- Rose Gold: There is no such thing as pure rose gold either, since rose gold is an alloy of gold and copper. Rose gold, red gold, and pink gold are all made from varying combinations of gold, copper, and (sometimes) small amounts of silver. The varying percentage of copper used determines the color of the gold.
