Maintaining your jewelry is as essential as maintaining a car or your home. You want your jewelry to sparkle and shine for 10 or 20 years like it did when you brought it home for the first time.
Below, we will share some jewelry maintenance tips and some things to avoid so you can make sure your gemstones remain scintillating forever.
- Have Your Jewelry Cleaned and Checked by a Professional
At llyn strong fine art jewelry, we strongly recommend having your jewelry cleaned and checked by a professional every six months.
You want to ensure your prized investments stay beautiful and in good shape, right? Jewelry, like anything else, gets dirty and wears out over time.
Our professional team of jewelers is always delighted to clean and check your jewelry – whether you purchased it from us or not.
Drop by our store at 1322 E. Washington St. Suite C1 Greenville, SC, any time during our regular business hours (Tuesday – Friday from 10am – 5pm, and Saturday from 11am – 4pm) to have your jewelry cleaned.
You can also clean your jewelry yourself with designated jewelry cleaners or a mild detergent. Just make sure you dry them thoroughly.
At the same time, some gems, such as opals, emeralds, and pearls, are best left to the professionals because they are more fragile than other gemstones.
- Keep Your Gemstones Out of the Pool and Away from the Gym
As summertime approaches, you might want to flash your bling poolside. But be careful! Chlorine can degrade the integrity of many metals and abrades porous stones such as pearls, lapis, and turquoise. The same holds true for household cleaners. So take off those gemstones before your scrub the tub!
Working out at the gym or participating in sports can also be dangerous for your jewelry. Rings can get bent lifting weights, and earrings can be caught, pulled, and broken during contact sports. If you’re headed out to break a sweat, best to leave your jewelry at home.
- Do Not Wear Your Jewelry to Bed
Necklaces can get tangled, and ear posts and wires can bend if you wear your jewelry to bed. It’s important to remember the “first on, last off” rule when putting on and removing jewelry. Glam yourself up with makeup and perfume first before putting on your jewelry.
And remember to remove all jewelry as part of your nighttime ritual.
Speaking of tangled necklaces, having necklaces with pearls and beads restrung every couple of years is essential to maintaining them. Also, make sure to wipe down your beads and pearls after each wearing to remove makeup and body oils.
- Help, My Ring is Stuck on My Finger!
As we age, our fingers will change in size. Wearing a ring that is too tight can cause circulation problems. How embarrassing would it be to need to have a ring cut off your finger?
On the other hand, if your ring is too large for your finger, this can cause it to rotate, bending prongs and chipping stones.
Our professional jewelry experts and artisans are happy to resize any rings.
- Check All Jewelry that Your Inherit
Inherited jewelry is special. Passed down from a previous generation, what better way to honor a loved one than wearing one of their keepsakes?
But inherited jewelry often needs to be looked over to ensure the prongs and shanks are in good working order. If ring shanks are too worn, we might recommend a half or full shanking.
Sometimes it’s best to completely reset the gemstones in an inherited piece of jewelry so you can enjoy it for years to come.
Check all inherited jewelry and have it appraised by an expert jeweler and graduate gemologist.
- Properly Store Your Jewelry
Happy jewelry is jewelry that is properly stored. You should store your jewelry in padded boxes or cloth pouches to keep them separated – metal can scratch, chip, and abrade your precious gemstones.
You might invest in a jewelry tree to hang your necklaces and earrings. When traveling, invest in travel pouches to avoid the above issues. Also, you should never pack your fine jewelry in checked luggage.
- Insure Your Jewelry
You insure your house, car, and other expensive purchases; your jewelry is no exception. Many homeowners’ policies allow you to add jewelry. But please reach out to us at 864.233.5900 if you require a jewelry-specific insurance recommendation.
- Don’t Nuke Your Jewelry
Microwaves and jewelry don’t mix. Forty years in the business, we discover something new every day. A customer shyly admitted that she had accidentally microwaved her jewelry collection during her beach vacation. She was left with one gigantic lump of metals and gemstones.
Our jewelers went to work. After a couple of weeks of soaking her collection in our ultrasonic machine, we diligently removed all the small pieces of plastic. After buffing all the pieces and a little re-stringing, we restored her collection like it was brand new.
Questions about cleaning and maintaining your jewelry?