Gold has a shine all its own when it is new. If your gold jewelry has intricate carvings or fine details, they can reflect the light just like a diamond flashing the room. Despite what you may have been told growing up, you can hurt gold. Although it’s impervious to a lot of things, it’s still metal, and a relatively soft metal at that, so it can easily get scratched, nicked, or bent. There are everyday chemicals in your house that can degrade your gold jewelry quickly. If you want to keep your gold looking like new, follow this advice:

Never wear gold jewelry when using chemicals to clean your house, work on the car, or especially at work. The chemicals don’t have to be hazardous or harsh to damage your gold. Simple cleaners like cleanser, Soft-Scrub, and any other chlorine derivative product can slowly dissolve your gold, and at the very least dull the surface and take away the shine from your gold jewelry. This isn’t because the gold in your jewelry gets attacked, it’s the other metals alloyed with the gold that get attacked. And the lower the karat number, the more alloy metals there are to be attacked. So a 10k gold wedding band, which is great for not bending and distorting, is also more at risk to chemical attack. Chemicals get into the structure of the alloy, react with what they want to react with, and on a microscopic level, your gold band looks like a sponge; full of holes and craters. And you can easily see why jewelry in this condition can break or crack easily. So much for today’s chemistry lesson.

A more common way to damage gold jewelry is to scratch or nick it. Believe it or not, the most-likely place for this to happen is in the jewelry box if each piece is not separated. Some of the stones in jewelry are much harder than gold (diamonds and rubies, for example), and can quickly mar the finish on your gold. Keep everything separated.

Once a year, take your gold jewelry to your favorite jewelry store and have them inspect and clean your piece. The jeweler can polish out most light scratches, inspect the clasps and attachments for looseness or imminent failure, and can also check for cracks in the metal. This is important, because identifying and fixing these small cracks proactively is much better than trying to repair a piece after it has broken completely apart.

You work hard to afford gold jewelry, so when you get it, you cherish it, and you have every right to. But don’t let the excitement of the piece wear off and allow it to fall into disrepair, or it may never be able to be brought back to like-new condition. You want a piece you can proudly pass on to your child or grandchild to remember you by and cherish. Make sure it stays in good shape for them too.

You can find the full article about caring for gold jewelry and much more jewelry advice and information on Jewelrista.com