My engagement and wedding rings are yellow gold and I want them in white gold. Can that be done without taking out the diamonds? Is that expensive?
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on Friday, August 12th, 2011 at 7:09 pm and is filed under White Gold Wedding Rings.
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white gold has nickel or palladium mixed into the alloy to make it whitish. Changing the alloy of an existing ring isn’t practical, of course. But, the fact is, when you look at most ‘white gold’ today what you actually see is the rhodium plating which is usually on it. There is probably no reason in theory why you could not have your yellow gold ring rhodium plated. But there are two practical problems, first that the jeweler would probably want to do nickel plating over the yellow gold to give it a bright finish before the rhodium plating–and you might be allergic to nickel. Second, rings are very high wear items, and even with a good thick rhodium plating, it will start wearing in spots and there will be a strong contrast as the yellow starts showing through. With a thin, back-of-the jewelry-shop plating, the life will be very bad–probably not more than a few months.
Ranet, ‘white gold’ is not brilliant white it’s a grayish or yellowish white (different grades and whitenesses are available). So what you usually see on white gold is rhodium plating. If the rhodium is thin and wears through, you see the underlying material which should be white gold. But based on the complaints we’ve posted here, I suspect that it jewelers are using white gold of low whiteness value, and it is becoming more common for jewelers to just rhodium plate yellow gold and sell it as white gold, or at least to use white gold that is not nearly white enough.