Almost every question about whether jewelry will last is really one question: what is underneath the gold?
The words brands use for this are inconsistent, and some of them are marketing rather than measurement. Here is what each one actually means.
Gold plated
A thin layer of gold applied over a base metal, usually brass, measured in microns. Standard costume plating runs about 0.5 microns. It is the cheapest way to make something look gold, and it is why so much jewelry turns a wrist green: once that layer wears through, the copper in the brass underneath reacts with the acids on your skin.
A correction worth making: gold plated and gold vermeil are not the same thing, though the words get used interchangeably. Vermeil is a legal standard in the United States. To be called vermeil a piece must be gold over sterling silver, at least 2.5 microns thick. Gold over brass is not vermeil, no matter what the listing says.
Gold filled
A much thicker layer of gold bonded to a base metal core under heat and pressure. In the US it must be at least 1/20th of the item's total weight to carry the name. That is roughly a hundred times the gold of standard plating, and it is genuinely durable.
Its weakness is the core, which is usually brass. Gold filled resists wear well, but where it does wear through, you are back to the same copper problem.
PVD gold over stainless steel
This is what our everyday pieces are, and it is worth explaining because it is the least understood of the four.
PVD stands for physical vapour deposition. Rather than dipping a piece in a chemical bath, the gold is vapourised in a vacuum chamber and bonds to the surface at a molecular level. The result is harder and far more scratch- and wear-resistant than electroplating, which is why it is used on watch cases and surgical instruments before it was ever used on jewelry.
The second half matters as much as the first. Underneath is surgical-grade stainless steel, not brass, and that is the reason these pieces do not turn skin green: there is no copper in the alloy to react. It is also why they are genuinely hypoallergenic rather than hypoallergenic in the advertising sense.
Together, that is what lets us call our everyday jewelry waterproof and mean it. Ocean, shower, pool, sweat. It is not a coating that needs protecting.
Solid gold
Gold all the way through, alloyed with other metals for strength, and sold by karat. Our LUX collection is 14k solid gold set with real stones. Solid gold does not tarnish and does not wear through, because there is nothing underneath it to reach.
So which should you buy
It depends entirely on how you intend to wear it.
- For something you put on and forget about — swim in, shower in, sleep in — PVD gold over stainless steel is the most sensible thing on this list. It costs more to manufacture than plating and it behaves like it.
- For an heirloom, buy solid gold. Nothing else lasts generations.
- For a trend piece you will wear a season, plated is fine, as long as you know that is what you bought.
The only real red flag is vagueness. A brand that will not tell you the base metal and the finish is usually hoping you will not ask. Ours is 14K gold PVD over surgical-grade stainless steel, it carries a one-year guarantee, and we clean it free in the Nassau boutique for as long as you own it.
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