Guide

Caring for your jewellery

Lab-grown diamonds are the hardest thing you own. Gold is not. Most of what follows is about protecting the metal and the setting.

Cleaning at home

What dulls a lab-grown diamond is not damage, it is film — hand cream, soap, the natural oils on your skin. Light enters through the top of a lab-grown diamond and should bounce back out; a greasy underside stops that happening, and it goes flat.

Warm water with a drop of ordinary washing-up liquid. Soak for ten minutes.
Work gently around and under the lab-grown diamonds with a soft toothbrush. The underside is where the film collects and where the light gets in.
Rinse in clean warm water — over a bowl, never over an open drain.
Dry with a soft lint-free cloth, and let it air a few minutes before putting it away.

What not to use

Bleach and chlorine. Chlorine attacks the alloys in gold and can weaken a claw until it gives way. Take rings off before a swimming pool or a hot tub.
Toothpaste, baking soda and household scouring powders. They are abrasive and will scratch gold.
Ultrasonic cleaners, unless we have said the piece is suitable. They can shake a lab-grown diamond loose in a setting that was already worn.

Wearing it

Jewellery goes on last and comes off first: after moisturiser, perfume and hairspray, and before you shower, sleep, swim, garden, or lift anything at the gym. Nothing ages a ring faster than a barbell.

A lab-grown diamond scratches every other gemstone and every metal, even another lab-grown diamond. That is the one reason pieces should not be stored loose together.

Storing it

Each piece in its own pouch or a lined compartment, so nothing rubs against anything else.
Chains fastened before they go away, which is most of the battle against knots.
Somewhere dry. A bathroom cabinet is the worst place in the house for gold.

Once a year

Bring the piece to us, or to any competent jeweller, and have the settings checked. A claw that has worn thin is a five-minute job to tighten and an expensive one to discover on a pavement. We will clean and polish it at the same time.

Rhodium plating on white gold wears through over a few years of daily wear — that is normal, not a fault, and re-plating restores it.