What is rhodium-plated gold?

Surely you are preparing to buy a gold ring, but its description leaves you doubtful.

What rhodium-plated gold makes up the ring you fell in love with?

Don’t panic, it’s quite simple.

Ring in rhodium-plated white gold, from the Vivalatina collection

Rhodium is a precious metal, even more expensive than gold; and rhodium plating is the operation that consists of plating a thin layer of rhodium on another metal (gold or silver in jewelry).

Your rhodium-plated gold is therefore rhodium-plated gold.

Why plate gold with rhodium?

Rhodium is a white metal with high covering power and unalterable, just like gold.

Furthermore, for a long time, and still today, most white gold alloys were not perfectly white, so much so that it was customary to cover them with a layer of rhodium to give them a whiter and brighter white luster than that of a white gold alloy.

Being unalterable (just like gold), rhodium is stainless and does not oxidise.

Polished white gold ring not yet rhodium-plated

However, the rhodium layer has a limited lifespan (approximately 18 months), given its thinness and the impacts and rubbing to which the jewel is subjected.

You should therefore plan to renew the rhodium plating of your jewelery from time to time.

How much does this rhodium plating cost?

The cost depends on the thickness of the plating which usually varies between 1 and 5 microns. You will find the details in this article.

Rhodium plating costs from 3 to 12 euros, also considering the costs of the service with taxes, which vary from jeweler to jeweller.

The price obviously depends on the thickness, the price of the rhodium and the jeweler’s costs. Generally it varies from 25 euros for a small jewel to 60 euros for a jewel with pearls or stones.

How do you break in a gold ring with rhodium?

Rhodium plating is done by electrolysis.

The ring or jewel to be rhodium-plated is placed in contact with a solution containing rhodium phosphate and an electric current is passed which allows the metal ions to attach to the gold of the ring.

For more information on the rhodium plating process read this very interesting article.

Rhodium and black gold

You may have heard of black gold.

While there is no gold alloy that gives it a black color, white gold jewelry can be plated with black-dyed rhodium. So much so that gold jewelery has a black colour, given by black rhodium plating.

Ring in black gold and white gold, 18k gold (source photo)

Obviously the slightest scratch on the coating will be clearly visible, unlike a white gold ring, for which the color of the gold is grey/white under the layer of rhodium.

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