Your jewellery is losing its shine in the drawer: 8 free fixes
Eight free or near-free fixes for the jewellery you already own — the wash that suits gold and diamonds, the foil bath that brings silver back, how to clean pearls and costume stones without ruining them, and the storage and daily habits that keep the shine in.
Silver turns black on its own. The dark layer is silver sulfide, and it forms wherever sulfur compounds in the air meet the metal, which is why the chain left in the box goes cloudy while the ring worn every day stays bright. 12 Damp air speeds the reaction, and so does the heating: the sulfur that comes off a boiler and a radiator adds to it in a closed room, which is why a box of silver looks worse in November than it did in August. 1 Most of what dulls everything else is a film rather than a reaction — skin oil, hand cream, soap, perfume, hairspray and the mist off a cleaning bottle, sitting on the metal and in the gaps behind a setting. 3 Two groups want the opposite of a soak: pearls, opal and turquoise are porous enough to take water in, and the stones on most costume pieces are glued rather than set. 3
Everything below is free or near-free, and the kit is what is already in the kitchen: warm water, a drop of washing-up liquid, a soft baby toothbrush, aluminium foil, baking soda, a lint-free cloth and a box. A silver polishing cloth or a small pot of polish is worth the money where you own neither already, and even that is optional. The eight fixes go in the order the work happens: the wash that suits most pieces, the two ways to bring silver back, the materials that want a wipe instead of a soak, the storage, the daily habits, and the point where your own work stops.
1. Wash what can be washed, in warm water and a drop of soap
Steps
- Put the plug in the sink, or work over a bowl. The plughole is where rings go. 4
- Mix warm water with a few drops of washing-up liquid in a bowl or a cup. 35
- Leave gold, diamond and hard-stone pieces to soak for up to five minutes; Good Housekeeping UK allows gold ten. 36
- Lift each piece out and brush the crevices with a soft baby toothbrush, or a clean makeup brush for a delicate setting. 35
- Rinse under running water with the plug still in, or lift the small pieces out inside a little strainer, then dry them on a soft lint-free cloth. 35
Why it works: The film around a stone is oil and soap residue, not damage, and warm soapy water loosens it and carries it off. Nothing in this method scratches, which is what makes it the one wash you can run over and over without wearing the piece down. 56
Avoid this mistake: Keep the soak for gold, diamonds and the hard stones. Pearls, opal, turquoise and costume pieces with glued stones sit out this fix and have their own below, because a soak softens the glue and lets water into a porous stone. 3 Dry gold rather than leaving it to air-dry; damp on alloyed gold is what dulls the finish. 6
2. Bring silver back in a foil-lined bowl of hot water
Steps
- Line a glass or ceramic dish with aluminium foil, shiny side up. 2
- Add a tablespoon of baking soda for every cup of water, which is the same as a tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda for every 500 ml, then pour on boiling water and stir it to dissolve. 24
- Lay the pieces in so that every one touches the foil, and keep them from overlapping. 27
- Give light tarnish about 30 seconds and heavy tarnish up to five minutes; a tarnished chain can be left in for up to 30. 24
- Lift the silver out with a spoon or tongs, rinse it, and buff it dry with a soft cloth. 2
Why it works: Aluminium is a more reactive metal than silver, so in the hot soda bath the sulfur leaves the silver and bonds to the foil instead, turning the tarnish back into silver. The pieces have to touch the foil for that to happen, which is the whole trick. 27 In The Kitchn's five-method test this bath and a bought silver cream were the two that worked, and only the bath cleaned several pieces at once. 7
Avoid this mistake: Skip the baking-soda-and-vinegar version. Mix the two and they neutralise each other, so the fizz you get is the whole of the result. 8 A splash of vinegar is in some versions of this bath, and it partly cancels the soda you just added; the foil is the part doing the work. 2 One more thing the bath does: it lifts the deliberate black out of the recesses of an antique piece and leaves a slightly flat finish that wants a polish afterwards. 7
3. Keep toothpaste for the emergency, and know what it takes off
Steps
- Choose plain white paste: no gel, nothing whitening, nothing for tartar, and nothing built around baking soda. 4
- Wet the piece first, with the plug in the sink or over the bowl. 4
- Put a pea-sized blob on a soft cloth, a cotton bud or a baby toothbrush, and rub it gently into the tarnished spots; the cloth turning grey is the tarnish coming away. 34
- Leave it two to three minutes on a stubborn patch, then wipe it off and rinse well. 4
- Dry with a soft cloth, and work the paste out of any crevice it has packed into. 4
Why it works: Toothpaste is a mild abrasive, the same grit that polishes your teeth, and rubbed over silver it lifts the tarnish layer off. 34 In The Kitchn's test it scored better than dish soap and left the pieces noticeably brighter, with the warning that heavily tarnished silver takes real elbow grease. 7
Avoid this mistake: The abrasive is both the point and the price: every use takes a little metal with it and flattens a mirror finish, so keep toothpaste off sterling silver, off highly polished silver and off plated pieces. 4 It stays off opals, pearls and turquoise too. 4 A treated polishing cloth or a pot of silver polish is the safer answer for anything you care about, and the writer who ran the test says as much herself. 4
4. Pearls, opal and turquoise get a wipe, never a soak
Steps
- Lay the strand flat on a soft cloth. 3
- Mix a cup of warm water with a light squeeze of mild shampoo or baby soap. 35
- Dip a clean makeup brush into it, shake off the excess, and go over each pearl on every side with almost no pressure. 3
- Rinse with a well-wrung damp cloth rather than under the tap, then leave the strand flat to air-dry so the string is not stretched by hanging. 3
- Wipe the pearls with a dry soft cloth after each wear, before the day's oil and perfume settle into them. 3
Why it works: A pearl is porous and soft, so it holds dust and loses its lustre, and the silk it is strung on weakens in water. Cosmetics and perfume are what yellow a strand, which is why the wipe after wearing it does more than the wash. 35
Avoid this mistake: Water sitting on the piece is the thing to avoid; opal and turquoise are porous in the same way and take the same wipe. 3 Toothpaste, an abrasive, has no place on any of them. 4
5. Costume and glued stones want a wipe as well
Steps
- Mix a few drops of washing-up liquid into a bowl of water. 3
- Dip a cloth in, wring it out well, and wipe the suds gently over the piece. 3
- Rinse with a second cloth dipped in plain water and wrung out. 3
- Pat it dry, then lay the piece upside down on a cloth so water cannot collect in the setting. 3
Why it works: Costume pieces are made from brass, copper and aluminium, which tarnish faster than silver, and their stones are usually glued in place. A wipe takes the film off and gives the glue and the plating nothing to react to. 35
Avoid this mistake: The soak is what undoes costume jewellery: the glue softens and the stones lift off. 3 Lotion and perfume work on it more slowly, so put those on first and the jewellery last. 3
6. Store it so the shine does not go back
Steps
- Make sure the piece is dry before it goes away. 2
- Put each silver piece in its own small zip-top bag, press the air out and seal it. 35
- Drop a piece of chalk or a silica-gel sachet into the bag; both pull moisture out of the small pocket of air around the piece. 15
- Keep the box in a cool, dark, dry place, away from the windowsill, the radiator and the shower room. 3
- Hang chains on separate hooks, or give each its own pocket, so they cannot knot themselves together. 3
Why it works: Silver tarnishes faster in damp air, and a room with the heating on carries more sulfur, which is what makes a box of silver look worse as winter comes. 1 A sealed bag with a desiccant inside gives the piece a pocket of dry air to sit in, and the friction of wearing a piece slows the tarnish down, so the ring in daily rotation holds its shine better than the brooch left in the box. 15
Avoid this mistake: A piece sealed while it is still damp keeps the moisture against the metal, which is the one way the bag makes things worse; plastic wrap that traps water does the same. 2 The clear tray on an open shelf beside a steamy bathroom is where the tarnish comes back first. 1
7. Wear it properly: last on, first off
Steps
- Put perfume, hairspray and hand cream on before the jewellery, not after. 13
- Take rings off for washing your hands, showering, washing up and cleaning the house. 36
- Take everything off before swimming; chlorine and salt water both go to work on jewellery. 3
- Take gold off before the gym and before gardening; sweat dulls it and soil scratches pure gold. 6
- Wipe each piece with a soft dry cloth before it goes back in the box at the end of the day. 6
Why it works: The things that dull jewellery are the things you put on your skin and the chemicals under the sink. Perfume and lotion leave a film the metal keeps, chlorine and cleaning sprays attack the surface, and sweat and steam dull gold. 36 Skin oil tarnishes silver as well, and the friction of wearing it is what holds that back. 1
Avoid this mistake: The piece that is never taken off is the one that suffers: a ring worn through every shower and every washing-up, and a chain slept in, are where the finish wears back first. 6
8. The jobs that belong to a jeweller
Steps
- Check the maker's own instructions first. Some brands publish a care method and sell a cleaner made for their pieces, and that method outranks anything here. 3
- Ask about cleaning and polishing while you are there. Some manufacturers do it for their own pieces at no charge, which is worth a phone call before you polish something good yourself. 6
- Take in anything you cannot identify, and any stone that looks damaged, loose or about to come away. Those are bench jobs, not kitchen jobs. 36
- Have valuable pieces looked at now and then, so a loosening stone is tightened before it is lost. 3
Why it works: Two things decide what a piece needs, and neither is visible from the outside: what the metal and the stones actually are, and whether a setting is about to let go. A jeweller can see both, and a repair caught early costs less than a stone lost on the pavement. 36
Avoid this mistake: A bought jewellery cleaner is not automatically safe for every stone it meets, so read it against the piece or ask, and stop if a stone looks ready to move. 6 Where you cannot tell what a piece is made of, let the jeweller clean it. 3
Tonight, take the silver out of the open tray and put it in a bag with a piece of chalk, which takes a minute and is the fix that slows everything down. This week, run the piece that looks worst through the foil bath, and put a polishing cloth on the shopping list if there is none in the house. From then on, the habit underneath all eight is the same one: last on, first off — put the jewellery on after the perfume, take it off before the shower, the pool and the washing-up, and wipe it before it goes back in the box. Anything valuable, anything with a stone that has started to move, and anything you cannot identify goes to a jeweller instead.
References
- 1How to Make Tarnished Silver Shine Again, According to Pros
goodhousekeeping.com
- 2How to Clean Silver with Aluminum Foil and Baking Soda
apartmenttherapy.com
- 3How to Clean Jewelry - Best Jewelry Cleaning Tips
goodhousekeeping.com
- 4Using toothpaste to clean silver jewellery, the results were shocking
goodhousekeeping.com
- 5How to Clean Jewelry at Home
apartmenttherapy.com
- 6How to clean and restore your tarnished gold jewellery
goodhousekeeping.com
- 7I Tested 5 Methods for Cleaning Tarnished Silverware
apartmenttherapy.com
- 8Why Washing Lettuce Doesn't Get Rid of E. coli
lifehacker.com
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