Starfish Necklace ( 14K Gold )

(WE DO NOT OFFER PLATED JEWELLERY IN OUR COLLECTION)

Plated Jewellery is a very light layer of gold - 0.5 microns actual gold or less - on top of a base metal (usually brass | copper). The thin layer of gold is plated onto the base metal to create gold plated jewelry.

Since the gold plating is very thin, the gold can rub off easily. It is also more prone to tarnishing when exposed to any kinds of liquids or chemicals. Although gold itself does not corrode, copper and brass will, especially when exposed to liquids (in the air, sweat, lotion, perfume, etc). Gold plated Jewellery is much, much cheaper than the other types of Jewellery because it uses a tiny amount of gold on top of a base metal.

Gold vermeil (pronounced ver-may) is thick gold plating on top of sterling silver. Most country require at least 2.5 microns of gold plated on top of sterling silver. It is hypoallergenic, so people with metal allergies can wear it safely. Since the gold plating in vermeil is much thicker than gold plated jewelry, the gold lasts much, much longer.

Many companies can claim their products are vermeil, but their products don't actually have a minimum standard of 2.5 microns of gold. 2.5 microns converted to inches is .0001", so as you can imagine, it's quite hard to measure without proper equipment. 

There is 2 ways way to test if the company sells legit Vermeil Jewellery. One way is to understand that vermeil Jewellery ONLY uses silver as base metal. The second method is to know if they allow cleaning of Jewellery using a certified Jewellery polishing cloth. Plated Jewellery will not be possible to cleanse using certified polishing cloth as the thin layer of gold will be easily wipe off

(At DHM, our Gold Vermeil is plated with 3.0 microns actual gold layer and 4.0 microns of actual rose gold layer, using ONLY silver as base metal.)

Gold filled | Rose Gold filled Jewellery has almost 100x more gold than plated Jewellery. Since the gold is mechanically bonded to the base rather than plated, it can’t rub off. It has the same qualities as solid gold Jewellery at a fraction of the cost.

However as it is only available in sheet or wire form and cannot be casted or poured in to a mold. They are not suitable to be used to create complicated Jewellery designs.

(Whenever we want to create complicating designs, we will use Vermeil Quality as a substitute. As both quality are similarly equivalent)

Solid gold Jewellery is just as the name suggests - the whole Jewellery piece is made entirely of gold (no base metal). There are many different karats of gold, which determines the amount of gold vs alloy. Pure gold (24k) is too soft and malleable to wear, so the gold must be alloyed with other metals to give it strength and durability. 14k solid gold means 14 parts gold (58.3%) and 10 parts alloys (41.7%), while 18k solid gold means 18 parts gold (75%) and 6 parts alloys (25%). The lower the karat, the less expensive it is because it is using less gold.

It’s great to wear everyday, won't fade, and is hypoallergenic. However, since the  whole piece is made of gold, it is very expensive and unaffordable to many people. Many retailers of solid gold jewelry also have high markups, so one simple necklace can be hundreds of dollars.