Your personal jewelry pieces are fine and delicate products that require frequent care and maintenance. Through our experience with our customers we have noticed a lot of negligence and sometimes even abuse to these beautiful pieces. It is important for you as a jewelry owner to understand the effect that everyday activities can have on your jewelry.
Jewelry can obviously be scratched, broken, or damaged beyond repair from any sort of trauma or forceful impact. However, jewelry can also be damaged through regular human activities. Activities such as washing your hands or putting on lotion can slowly deteriorate the look and integrity of your jewelry. Lotions and washing soaps lay a non-transparent film on diamonds and gems, not only diminishing their color and brilliance, but also providing an area for more dirt and dust to collect. This will convert a sparkling, beautiful stones, into a dull, unattractive rocks. This process often happens slowly over time so that many people don’t even notice the difference and only remember what their jewelry is supposed to look like after they have had it cleaned.
However, there are many steps that people can take at home in order to keep their jewelry in clean, sparkling conditions.
- Avoid applying any type of lotion or washing your hands while still wearing your jewelry.
- There are many care kits that can be used at home to clean and wash jewelry. You can go to any fine jeweler which should be able to provide a cleaning solution for diamonds, a cleaning solution for delicate gems, and a solution for sterling silver.
- Frequent visits should be made to your local full service fine jeweler for a thorough sonic and steam cleaning and check-up. This should not cost you a thing as most jewelers are willing to provide this service free of charge, even if you did not purchase the piece from them. They should also perform a full inspection and inform you if there is any required maintenance or repairs that need to be done.
- If you have warranty required visit every six months, be sure not to miss that. Because your visit will enforce your warranty, and your jewelry will cleaned and checked
- At least once a year each piece of jewelry should be given to your trusted jeweler for a thorough polishing, cleaning, and rhodium plating (for white gold). At the same time the professional should examine the piece thoroughly and inform you if any stone tightening or prong re-tipping is required.
- One of the major problems that lead to loosing stones from the setting is the normal wear of the prongs and channels that hold stones in place. Be sure to ask your jeweler to check them for you.
- Rings in particular are more exposed for tear and wear. Most likely, any rings more than five years old will need prongs enforcement
- Be aware that many pieces of jewelry require special attention when being cleaned. This includes many delicate gemstones such as: Emerald, Opal, Tanzanite, Pearls… and many more. We recommend that these stones be cleaned only by your local full service fine jeweler. There is also some jewelry with stones set in a way that when cleaned improperly can result in many problems.
- One example of this is any jewelry piece with an invisible setting. The stones in these rings are often set using minute amounts of glue that can be removed when exposed to an ultrasonic cleaner or the wrong type of cleaning solution, causing all the stones to fall out. Again pieces like these should be taken to your local jeweler for cleaning. If you are not sure, take it in!
Without this the jewelry you wear everyday will not look as pretty as you want them to be, they will begin to deteriorate, and you will begin to loose stones from them.
We advise you to go to a jeweler whom you see regularly for your purchases and repairs for these cleanings and inspections. If you do not have one and you live in the Inland Empire, we at Le Vive Jewelry Express are more than willing to furnish these services for you at no charge. Visit us at 3713 Arlington Ave Riverside, CA.
