Three Tips To Keep In Mind When Cleaning Emerald Earrings
Emerald earrings are rich in color, elegant in design and versatile in style, allowing them to fit along seamlessly with your wardrobe. To get the most use out of your earrings, it's important to go about the cleaning process correctly, as there is a wrong and a right way to go about this process. Proper cleaning won't just protect the emerald, but it will also keep it looking better.
Wipe Down Often
While you don't need to deep clean your earrings after every wear, it is helpful to at least wipe them down after each wear. Oil from your skin and dirt can settle along the edge of the emerald placement. Over time, especially if you wear them often, an excessive amount of buildup can generate.
This will only make deep cleaning more challenging and make your earrings look old and worn. Perform this step using a micro-fiber cloth, as it can easily fit into the small crevices around the emerald, and it won't scratch or damage the emerald.
Avoid Ultrasonic Cleaners
When ultrasonic cleaners became readily available, it seemed like the perfect way to clean your jewelry without the hard work. Avoid placing your emerald earrings, or any other emerald jewelry for the matter, inside one of these devices. First, an ultrasonic cleaner can increase the risk of stone displacement or a scratch due to the ultrasound vibrations that occur during the cleaning cycle.
Second, some emerald stones are treated with a special coating to enhance their natural color. These vibrations can cause this coating to wear away, affecting the appearance of the stone. Instead of cleaning the stone to enhance it, you might end up damaging it.
Clean Alone
One of the safest ways to clean emerald earrings is to place them in a bowl filled with a mixture of room temperature water and soap with de-greasing qualities. The problem is that this is also a safe way to clean a number of other hard precious stones, including diamonds, rubies and sapphires. This sometimes causes people to wash all their stones together.
Avoid making this mistake. When all of these hard stones are in the water together, it's more likely that these stones will brush up against each other and cause an imperfection like a scratch. The best way to avoid this is to wash your emerald earrings by themselves.
Cleaning is a great way to protect your emerald earrings, but only if you're going about the process correctly. Make sure you are cleaning your earrings with long-term wear in mind.