Rose Gold, the Blushing Gold, For Your Engagement Ring

Ladies wedding band with Norwegian Rosemaling hand engraving with black rhodium finish.

I’ve talked a lot about yellow and white gold engagement rings in other posts. While I’ve touched briefly upon various types of gold, and how they are made, I felt that rose gold deserved its own post.

Rose gold has a little secret that impacts how your engagement ring will perform for you.

How About Rose Gold For Your Engagement Ring?

Rose gold is such a beautiful , and popular gold color, it draws many to it as their chosen gold color for their engagement ring. Is it right for you?

In this post I’ll let you know about how this gold’s unusual quirks could spell trouble for your engagement ring’s longevity. First I’ll get a little technical.

What Makes Gold Pink?

Pink Gold Looks Great with Rubies

Rose gold is also be known as “red gold” or “pink gold.”  This is because the rosey pink color gold is a man-made alloy, “pure” rose gold does not exist in nature.

Generally speaking, the rose color is achieved by combining gold with a copper alloy metal mix.  Copper’s bold, almost orange-like color allows gold to achieve that nice rosey pink color.

The varying percentage of copper used determines the color of the gold. The more copper that is used, the stronger the rose color.

How is Rose Gold Created?

Rose Gold with Yellow Gold Makes This Wedding Ring Sing

If you’d like to go all technical with me here are possible recipes of alloyed metals used to create your pretty pink gold.

14kt Rose gold
58% gold
32% copper
10% silver

18kt Rose gold
75% gold
22.25% copper
2.75% silver

22kt Rose Gold – aka: Crown Gold
91.667% gold
The percentages vary depending on who makes it. These percentages are one company’s percentages.

So What Does This Mean?

A rose gold chain and pendant. This is a prong set rose quartz crystal. Prongs are great on a pendant which gets little stress from daily wear. 

Next Year You’ll See More Rose Gold Engagement Rings

I foresee a rise in the demand for rose color engagement rings based on the fashions and furnishings colors that are coming out.

I want people to know about the special needs of rose metal especially from a maintenance standpoint.  If you are used to yellow gold and white gold jewelry, you are used to leaning on a certain level of sturdiness.

Deb and I Discussed Rose Gold’s Issues Before We Made This Awesome Rose Gold Ring for Her

What Could Happen to my Rose Gold Engagement Ring?

With Rose’s higher copper content, it is a more difficult metal mix to work with technically, than yellow or white gold.  The high copper content makes it susceptible to color changes if it comes into contact with certain chemicals.

If abused, which isn’t hard to do, a rose ring can develop a different texture at the area of repair or heat work. Sometimes when soldering is done on a pink gold ring, the area of solder changes color or texture or in the worse case becomes weaker in that area.

Why Does Rose Gold Have These Issues?

My bench jeweler explained it this way, he said, “Calla that copper is all mixed up in the gold, but you heat it up and it wants to separate from the gold and migrate to itself. You know how badly copper oxidizes, (darkens), well discoloration isn’t the only problem that can occur when copper molecularly moves around on you. An area weaker than the surrounding gold can be created while the piece is heated. This can cause future cracking and problems.”

Pick Your Jeweler Carefully for Your Pink Gold Engagement Ring

This is a rose and diamond ring I designed to re set a client’s wedding diamond. We went for fun texture and shapes. For strength my client opted for a bezel setting style rather than prongs.

Rose gold has to be heat worked more carefully. When your pink gold jewelry needs to be repaired, be sure to go to a jeweler experienced in working on it.   Preferably a jeweler who can offer laser welding as an alternative to open flame soldering.

Also, know that your rose ring will probably need repair more often than yellow or white gold, due to the fact that it’s alloy composition makes it susceptible to becoming brittle in places. It is also softer than yellow and white gold. Where this makes the most difference is at the point of tiny prongs holding tiny diamonds.

In my experience, tiny prongs made in rose gold need more maintenance than do their white gold and yellow gold brothers. Pink gold is more malleable than yellow and white gold. Malleability is movableness. If you hit your ring prong just right, it could move to the side and your tiny diamond could go flying. That’s not something that’d happen with white gold, which is a much harder and less yielding metal mix.

Are You Trying to Rain on my Rose Gold Engagement Parade?

This Ring is Worn on Special Occasions. Not Daily.

I’m seriously not trying to rain on your parade. I custom make many rose gold engagement and wedding rings.

While I’m designing them I’m letting my client know that if they choose the popular  “U” set prong design, that like a fine sports car, their ring will need maintenance more often that same design in yellow or white gold.

Side view of engagement ring with halo of diamonds

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved the beauty of rose gold for years. I just like people to be informed. And wearing rose gold daily requires a bit more forethought and perhaps design tweaks.

Check out the history of rose gold.

You’ll be wearing your ring every day, it will get banged around and loved. I just wanted you to know about rose gold and its little quirks!

Rose Gold Jewelry Designer,
Calla Gold