Pearl education
How to care for your pearls
A pearl is the only gem produced by a living animal, and it is the only one you can damage with the things already sitting on your bathroom counter.
Everything else in a jewelry box is mineral. A pearl is calcium carbonate laid down in an organic binder by an animal, which makes it softer than almost anything it will be stored next to and vulnerable to acids that would not touch a sapphire.
None of that makes pearls fragile. I have handled strands well over a century old that still look right, and I have seen two-year-old pearls ruined in a single afternoon. The difference is almost never how often they were worn. It is what they were exposed to, and whether anyone put them in an ultrasonic cleaner.
What follows is what actually matters, and why, so you can work out the answer to a situation this page does not cover.
~ Jeremy Shepherd, Founder and CEO of Pearl Paradise
The part that explains the rest
What actually damages a pearl
Nacre is built from microscopic platelets of aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate, bound together by conchiolin, which is an organic protein. That structure is what produces luster, and it is also the source of every vulnerability on this page.
Three things follow from it.
Acid dissolves calcium carbonate. Perfume, hairspray, sunscreen, household cleaners, vinegar, lemon juice and ordinary perspiration are all acidic enough to attack nacre given contact and time. The damage does not look like a scratch. It looks like the pearl has gone flat, and once the luster is gone it does not come back.
The binder is organic, which means a pearl holds a trace of water and can eventually dry out if it is sealed away for long enough.
Nacre is soft. It sits around 2.5 to 4 on the Mohs scale, below every gemstone it is likely to share a drawer with and below most metal. Pearls do not scratch each other much. Everything else scratches them.
There is a fourth point that gets left off almost every care page, and it is the drill hole. On a drilled pearl, that hole is the one place the interior is open to the world. Water carries dirt into it, thread holds moisture against it, and organic material can migrate out through it, which is why fading in a drilled pearl usually shows around the hole first.
Day to day
Wearing them
The old rule is the right one. Pearls go on last and come off first.
Perfume, hairspray, lotion, sunscreen and cosmetics should all be on and dry before pearls go anywhere near your neck. Give it half an hour if you can. Hairspray is the worst of them, because it goes on as an airborne mist that lands on everything in the room, including a strand sitting on the dresser.
At the end of the day, wipe them with a soft cloth, lightly damp if they need it, before they go away. This takes ten seconds and it is the single most useful habit on this page. What you are removing is the day's perspiration, which is mildly acidic and which will otherwise sit on the nacre until the next time you wear them.
Take them off to swim, shower, exercise or clean the house. Chlorine and hot tub chemistry are harsh on nacre, and salt water dries into the drill hole. Warm soapy shower water loosens knots and stretches silk.
Wear them, though. Pearls do better on a person than in a drawer, and the small amount of moisture in ordinary wear suits them.
Cleaning
Almost always, a soft cloth is the answer
For ordinary wear, a soft cloth is the whole procedure, lightly dampened with water if the pearls need it. Wipe, then let them dry flat before you put them away, because a damp strand hung on a hook will stretch.
Every order we ship includes a pearl cloth for exactly this. It is not a specialist tool and there is nothing on it. Any soft, lint-free cloth does the same job.
If a piece genuinely needs more than that, use lukewarm water with the smallest amount of a mild soap, work with a soft cloth rather than a brush, rinse the cloth rather than the strand, and dry flat. Never put a knotted strand into water. Wet silk stretches permanently, holds moisture against every drill hole, and dries dirtier than it went in.
Undrilled pearls and pearls set in rings and earrings are more forgiving, since there is no thread involved, but the same rule about abrasives applies.
If a pearl is dull rather than dirty, cleaning will not fix it. That is damage to the nacre itself, and the honest answer is that it is done. Bring it to someone who will tell you that rather than sell you a treatment.
Never, with no exceptions
Everything else on this page is judgment. These are not.
- Ultrasonic cleaners
- Steam cleaners
- Jewelry dips and tarnish removers
- Bleach, ammonia or vinegar
- Toothpaste, baking soda or any abrasive
- Soaking a knotted strand
- Chlorinated pools and hot tubs
The first two are worth saying plainly, because both are standard equipment at a jewelry counter and both are usually offered free. An ultrasonic cleaner drives cavitation through the piece and can strip nacre, loosen it from the bead and shatter the pearl outright. Steam does the same job with heat. If you hand a pearl piece across a counter for cleaning, say no to both, and do not assume the person holding it knows.
Where the four types differ
Care by pearl type
Most care advice treats every pearl as the same object. They are not. What sits under the surface changes what you are protecting.
Treated, dyed and coated pearls
These sit outside the four rows because the care depends on the treatment rather than the type. Alcohol and solvents can lift a coating, dye lifts at the drill hole before anywhere else, and heat is a risk to both. If a pearl's color came from a bottle, water and friction are working against it every time you clean it. When you do not know a piece's treatment history, use a dry cloth and nothing else.
Between wearings
Storing them
Keep them soft and keep them separate.
Soft means a cloth pouch or a lined box. Separate means away from every other piece of jewelry you own, because a ring bezel or a diamond will mark nacre without any pressure at all.
Sealed bags are worth being clear about, because the advice you usually read is wrong. A zip bag is fine. We move and store pearls in them constantly and it does them no harm. What causes trouble is sealing pearls away for years at a time, because a pearl holds a trace of water and over a long enough period in a closed environment that moisture leaves and does not return. If a piece is going into storage for the long term, put it in cloth rather than plastic. For anything shorter, a bag is not a problem.
A safe is a perfectly good place for pearls, and they will keep in one for years.
Lay strands flat rather than hanging them. Hung silk stretches under the weight of the pearls, and a stretched strand shows gaps at the knots.
Avoid heat and direct sun, so not a windowsill, not a car, and not the drawer above a radiator.
Silk, knots and when to redo them
Stringing
On most strands, a knot sits between every pearl. It does two jobs. If the thread breaks you lose one pearl instead of all of them, and the knot keeps each pearl from grinding against its neighbors for the life of the strand.
It is not universal. Very small pearls and small graduated strands are often strung without knots between each pearl, partly because a knot would be nearly as large as the pearl and partly because it does not look right. An unknotted strand of tiny pearls is not a corner cut.
We string on silk. Nylon is an acceptable alternative and is more resistant to stretching, but silk drapes better and it is what fine strands have always been strung on. Either way, both absorb skin oils and both will darken with time.
Worn often, a strand wants restringing about once a year. Worn a few times a year, considerably less. The interval matters less than paying attention, because a strand tells you when it is due.
- The thread has visibly darkened, particularly near the clasp
- You can see thread between the pearls where you could not before
- The strand hangs noticeably longer than it used to
- Pearls turn or slide rather than sitting where they are put
- The knots look compressed or frayed
Do not try to wash a strand's thread. Water stretches the knots, weakens the silk, and cannot reach the dirt that is inside the drill holes anyway. Restringing costs less than the damage a broken strand does.
Any competent jeweler can restring a strand, and it is worth asking to see their work before you hand over something valuable. If you bought the strand from us, get in touch and we will take care of it.
The short version
If you remember four things
Last on, first off. Wipe them before they go away. Never an ultrasonic. Never anything abrasive.
That covers the great majority of what goes wrong. Everything else on this page is the reasoning underneath those four, which is worth having, because it lets you answer the situation I have not thought of.
If you are unsure about a specific piece, ask us. That includes pieces bought elsewhere and pieces inherited with no history at all, which are the ones people most often get wrong.
