What does Rhodium Plating for Silver and White Gold Jewelry means?
When you buy Jewelry, you always come across the term “Rhodium Plating”. So what is rhodium plating? More importantly, why rhodium plating? In this article, we will tell you everything you need to know about rhodium plating.
What Is Rhodium?
Rhodium is a precious metal similar to gold, silver, or platinum but only much more expensive! In fact, it is the most expensive of all the precious metals.
Wow! Mind blown!
How is it possible? Well, because it is extremely rare in nature, it is only found as a by-product of mining for other precious metals, such as platinum. This makes the price of rhodium very volatile as its availability is connected to platinum supply and demand.
More about Rhodium can be found in this in-depth article Here.
Since it is such a precious metal why have we seldom heard of solid rhodium jewelry?
Rhodium is the rarest of the platinum metals group
Why Don’t We Make Solid Rhodium Jewelry?
The reason is simple; the price of rhodium is very volatile and has huge ups and downs. To illustrate how extreme the price can become, rhodium can sometimes skyrocket to ten times the price of gold to $10,025 just before the 2008 financial crisis.
Other times, rhodium prices skydive down to the price of gold or platinum to around $1000 per ounce in the early year 2017.
Today on 12 September 2018, Rhodium is priced at USD $2,175.00 per ounce, and Gold is priced at USD $1,196.59 Per ounce according to BusinessInsider.com.
Rhodium costs almost twice the price of Gold today.
Because of the high vitality phenomenon, rhodium is not the most stable of investments. Gold is still kept as the “Gold standard” for precious metals due to its low volatility in price in comparison to other precious metals.
Another reason why rhodium is usually used in plating but not as a piece of solid rhodium jewelry is that, when pure, it is brittle and not very malleable thus it is very challenging to be crafted into fine jewelry.
Why Is Rhodium Such an Amazing Precious Metal?
Rhodium is commonly used to hide imperfections and bring forth a greater brilliance to silver or white gold pieces. Being both resistant to corrosion and harder than both silver and gold, rhodium-plated jewelry will have an excellent protective coat that shields jewelry from scratches and retains its shine.
While rhodium is both too expensive and too brittle to make jewelry out of, it is always the precious metal of choice as a plating material for other fine jewelry.
Rhodium Plating Before and After
One of the greatest advantages of rhodium-plated jewelry is that it doesn’t tarnish.
Rhodium plating on silver allows it to stay shiny for months and sometimes years.
Probably the best advantage of rhodium-plated jewelry is that it requires no particular cleaning, other than gently rinsing it with warm water. This makes life easier for jewelry lovers like you.
As a Bonus, Rhodium plated jewelry protects the wearer who is allergic to silver.
You can finally say goodbyes to the rashes caused by a metal allergy.
Is Rhodium Plating Really That Good?
So far, rhodium plating sounds great, a savior to every problem! Why not just a rhodium plate on everything? Wouldn’t it make any piece of fine jewelry infinitely better?
Well for every hero there is always a weakness. There are some cases when rhodium plating just doesn’t work.
As rhodium is extremely expensive only a very thin layer of rhodium is used in plating procedures. Over the years, this layer of rhodium will eventually come off, making re-plating a necessity. When it comes to pieces like rings or necklaces which come in close contact with the skin, the rubbing causes the plating to come off more quickly. This leads to a need for a thicker layer of plating, which, in turn, changes the color of the jewelry piece.
As Rhodium itself is brilliant silvery-white, it is not suitable for yellow gold which is yellow in nature, or vintage silver.
While rhodium plating is the star of the platinum family and works great to further bring shine to diamonds and cubic zirconia, different lines of products require different finishes.
Caution has to be taken that rhodium plated jewelry should never be cleaned with any chemicals or detergent
As the rhodium plating is always very thin, it will rub off the protective layer and expose the metal within to be tarnished.
How to Clean Rhodium Plated Jewelry?
If you ever want to wash or clean your jewelry, simply follow the 3 simple steps below
- Prepared a bowl of warm distilled water (Approx 45 degrees Celsius, NOT boiling water)
- Submerge your Rhodium Plated Jewelry pieces into the water for 15 minutes.
- Wipe dry gently your Rhodium Plated Jewelry with a clean microfiber cloth.
Bling Bling, your rhodium plated jewelry is shining again
Caution: Never do the following
- Never use a polishing cloth to “polish” your jewelry, you will damage the Rhodium plating or scratch the jewelry.
- Never use any kind of chemicals on your Rhodium Plated Jewelry or any kind of Jewelry.
Note: Any chemicals will damage your Jewelry and lead to the tarnishing of the jewelry.
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