Wedding bands: Platinum Or White Gold?
Posted on March 12th, 2010 in Blog | No Comments »
There is a popular misconception that platinum and white gold are both lustrous cold white metals. Wedding bands made from either of these metals do look white and do look great. Which is best? Let’s look at each one.
White gold - one of the most popular metals around these days when it comes to jewelry. Sorry to burst any balloons, but white gold is not a pure gold. Gold, in its purest form, is yellow and very soft - too soft to use in most jewelry pieces.
Pure gold is mixed with other metals to form a harder alloy that is then suitable for jewelry making. Pure gold is 24 carat and rarely used for jewelry. Once you create an alloy the purity drops so with gold, you end up with common alloys of 9 carat, 12 carat, 18 carat and 22 carat gold. When white gold is described as being 18 carat, it has 75% pure gold content.
A white gold alloy could contain quantities of silver, palladium, zinc, copper or nickel. These metals also help to harden the white gold for jewelry use. By combining yellow gold with these metals the yellow color is bleached white, hence the formation of white gold. White gold is much harder than yellow gold because of this combination of metals.
Wedding bands that are 18 carat should contain 75% gold, with the remaining 25% often 15% palladium, 5% silver and 5% copper. This would result in an 18 carat white gold that is hard wearing and yet looks very much like platinum. You can buy very cheap versions of white gold, however, they are generally made with inferior metals and don’t last as long as quality white gold.
Platinum - platinum is rarer than gold so it is substantially more expensive. Platinum is a fairly hard metal and while it can be worked into rings in its pure state, can also be alloyed for easier use. As with most metals, platinum can be graded based on its purity. Platinum itself is actually a light grey, not white.
Platinum and white gold are both normally plated with rhodium to give them that famous white finish. Rhodium plating is not permanent and will wear away over time. White gold wedding bands will eventually turn a dirty light grey in color as the rhodium wears off. Your platinum jewelry will lose that brilliant white finish as the rhodium wears off.
Although white gold is cheaper than platinum, they will both lose their rhodium plating and look rather cheap over time. You can restore the white lustre to your jewelry by having the rhodium plating reapplied. So which one is better for wedding bands? Many don’t realize that white gold was created to imitate platinum. Of course, these days white gold is popular in its own right. White gold is now almost as expensive as platinum so if you are looking for a cheap version, white gold may not be the answer. For anyone looking for the platinum finish, I suggest buying platinum.
If you like white gold as white gold, then make sure the alloys used are silver and palladium and not other cheaper metals. I like white gold, not because it looks like platinum, but because it looks like white gold.
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