A plated piece is a base metal, brass in most of this catalog, with a thin layer of gold or silver deposited over it. That layer is what you see and what wears. Nobody can tell you how many months it lasts, because it depends entirely on what it touches: sweat, perfume, chlorine, hand cream and friction all shorten it, and a piece worn twice a month outlives the same piece worn daily many times over.
The routine
Put jewelry on last when you dress and take it off first when you undress. Perfume, hairspray and lotion should be dry before a chain touches them. When you take it off at night, one pass with a dry microfibre cloth lifts the skin oil, and that single habit does more than any cleaner.
- Dry cloth after wearing, every time.
- Fresh water rinse and a pat dry after a swim, salt or chlorine.
- Store in the pouch or box it arrived in, not in an open dish in the bathroom.
- Take a chain off before a workout and before a shower with soap.
What to keep away from it
Silver dips and ultrasonic cleaners are made for solid metal, and both go straight through plating. Toothpaste and baking soda are abrasives and do the same thing more slowly. If a piece is genuinely dirty, use a barely damp cloth followed by a dry one.
Pearls need their own rule: they are softer than the metal around them and dull under scent and hairspray. Keep pearl pieces out of the same pouch as stone-set ones so nothing scratches them.
When the plating goes
It goes first where the piece rubs: the back of a chain against a collar, the inside of a bracelet clasp, the post of an earring. Once the brass shows through, a green mark on the skin is possible, because brass contains copper. It washes off and it is not a fault in the piece.
At these prices, replacing is what most people do, and it is why we keep the letters and the plain chains in stock year round. If you want a finish that does not wear at all, that is solid metal, and it is a different purchase.
The numbers here are the ones everyone at CAROVO took off the pieces themselves, not a rule of thumb copied from elsewhere.
Questions