GoldPaq

When you think of gold jewelry, chances are, you think of traditionally golden-hued jewelry?s rich buttery hue. You may be aware of white gold and rose gold, but how about chocolate gold, green gold, or even blue gold?

Today?s goldsmiths are coming up with more and more formulations to broaden the palette for gold, creating colored gold jewelry that is both stylish and interesting. The color of the gold is changed by adding other metals to the pure gold to create an alloy; this is not an uncommon practice, because pure gold is so soft that it is virtually unusable in jewelry making. For colored gold, the metal that makes up the alloy will determine the color of the finished product.

While you may be familiar with white gold, one of the most popular alternatives to traditional gold jewelry, do you know how it is created? Nickel is combined with pure gold to create a bright white alloy known as white gold; however, nickel causes skin irritation, or nickel dermatitis, in many people, resulting in the use of palladium instead for more expensive white gold jewelry. Palladium, which is similar to platinum in hardness, is much more expensive than nickel, but is not known to cause skin reactions.

Another old and popular color of gold is rose gold. Rose gold, which has a warm, soft, reddish-copper color, has been used in jewelry making for many years. Not surprisingly, the reddish-copper color of rose gold is due to the fact that it is created from an alloy of pure gold and copper. Found in many late 19th century and early 20th century jewelry designs, rose gold has lately enjoyed a comeback of sorts, as its popularity has begun to increase with people buying gold for their girlfriends.

Green gold is not unfamiliar to those who enjoy Black Hills Gold jewelry designs, which often incorporate leaf and flower designs, and use gold, rose gold, white gold, and green gold. Green gold, which is usually a light, spring green in color, is made by alloying gold with silver.

Chocolate brown gold is one of the newest of the colored golds, and is gaining popularity among jewelry trendsetters. High-end jewelry designers such as Fawaz Gruosi and Licia Mattioli have produced entire collections of exclusively chocolate gold pieces, and now even television QVC has begun to sell these chocolate gold pieces. Unlike most colored golds, chocolate gold is not created by a particular alloy, but rather by a vaporization process applied to rose gold, which penetrates and changes the color of the gold. The copper that is contained in rose gold is responsible for the reddish, almost coppery tone of much chocolate gold.

Almost as trendy as chocolate gold is black gold. Black gold, sometimes referred to as grey gold, depending on the shade, gets its color from several different methods of productions, including electrodeposition of black rhodium or ruthenium, or in vaporization processes similar to those used for creating chocolate gold. Black gold is especially popular for gentlemen?s jewelry.

Blue gold is becoming increasingly available in retail markets. Made by an alloy of pure gold and indium, blue gold comes in several shades of blue, but mostly a deep, true royal blue.

Purple, or violet gold, is made by alloying gold to aluminum in a certain ratio, which produces the violet-purple color. Because purple or violet gold is made with 79% pure gold, it is marked 18 karat gold.

While all colored golds are made with pure gold, and are therefore genuine gold products, there are considerations to remember when investing in a colored gold piece of jewelry that is not the traditional gold, white gold, or rose gold. When selling gold that is colored it might be worth less since it might not be 100% gold. For another thing, resizing and other repairs to untraditional colored gold jewelry may be difficult and expensive, or impossible, due to the fact that few jewelers are yet familiar with working with colored gold pieces. Furthermore, colored gold jewelry pieces may not be as durable as other gold pieces, due to the processes used to give them their color; i.e., gold alloyed with aluminum, rhodium, and other base metals may be brittle, while gold treated with chemical or vaporization processes may change color over time. For this reason, colored gold in untraditional colors is not recommended for everyday wear.

There are likely to be more colors emerge in the gold palette as goldsmiths find more and more ways to alloy gold and treat it for color. Colored gold, like colored diamonds, is yet another way to make a precious jewelry material even more special.

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