What affects Silver Jewellery?
admin | August 27, 2010
Just as washing clothes in the right temperature and with the right colours will help maintain an item of clothing, so does watching what you do with your sterling silver jewellery. Silver jewellery will always tarnish this is because there is sulphur in the air and this sulphur reacts with silver and gives a compound called silver sulphide or as we know it tarnishing which can be recognised as black or brown colours on our silver jewellery.
By using a simple silver cloth this has tarnish resistant’s in it that will remove all traces of tarnish by simply buffing the piece of jewellery. However by wearing your piece of jewellery in places such as the swimming pool, hot tub or when using household cleaning products for instance bleach, there is a chemical in bleach called chlorine which is also found in swimming pools too. The chlorine will actually dissolve the metal and change the colour of it and will often take off finish on the piece of jewellery that naturally protects it from tarnishing 24/7.
What you will notice with items that have become tarnish is because they have been left unworn for a while. It often does not happen with jewellery that you are wear consistently over a few days. There is actually something within the sea air that causes silver to blacken too. What some people have found that when they are at home their charm bracelet is fine, once they have travelled to work and been there all day, there will actually be a dark ring left around there wrist and their bracelet has also become discoloured. So there will be higher particles of sulphur in the air at work that do react with jewellery and unfortunately we cannot stop them.
What we can do is prevent wearing our jewellery in areas that will actually discolour our item permanently that we may never get the original look and shine back period. Refrain from wearing jewellery in the places mentioned above and make sure you invest in a good silver polishing cloth and take care of your jewellery.
