Gold Wedding Band Information

Wedding bands can be created out of 14k or 18k gold but there are specific issues that you need to realize before you decide on the type of gold you want for your wedding band. 14k gold is harder compared to 18k gold and this will make an impact in terms of the long term sturdiness of your wedding band. In it's purest state, gold is extremely soft and should not be used for jewelry making. It is commonly mixed with other metals such as copper or silver to make it more hard and better suited to holding up in the process of jewelry production. 14 karat gold will have at least 58 parts of pure gold for every 100. The remaining 42% would be made of the other metals that have been added to make it harder. To create 18k gold, the metals added to the pure gold would consist of 25% of the piece, whereas 75% would be pure gold. You would think that 18k would be a good choice for all wedding bands since it is more precious than 14k. This is not always the case, however.

Before moving forward with this discussion, it is important to emphasize that both yellow and white gold have exactly the same hardness. As explained previously, the hardness of gold depends on what karat the gold is, since 14k gold being harder than 18k gold. When you are deciding between yellow or white gold for your wedding band you should also think about the color of the gems (if any) that will be set in the ring. Some gemstones, such as rubies, topaz, emeralds, and citrine etc look fine in either white or yellow gold band rings. However, for the darker gemstones such as dark blue sapphires, white gold tends to enhance the color contrast between the white of the gold and the darkness of the gemstone. This will causes the dark sapphire to look even darker and sometimes black in many cases. If you are not sure about what stone looks good with your choice of gold color, you might want to ask a friend for their advice.

Lori writes articles about wedding band and coffee table info.