Being engaged in jewelry art for many years, and working with many different people, I have noticed that many customers – and even master jewelry makers – don’t always understand or appreciate the difference between metal covered with gold-plate (also called gilding) as opposed to the gold-fill process (sometimes called cladding, overlay or gold-rolled).
Both involve a base metal (brass, copper, or silver) fused with a top layer of gold, so the surface appearance is the same. But the difference becomes important for other reasons, as I personally discovered with my husband’s cuff links. More about that later...
There are two basic distinctions between gold-plate and gold-fill:
[chart – gold electro-plated]
(1) The thickness of the gold layer for gold-plated metal is 0.5-8 microns; for gold-filled metal it’s 5-120 microns (1000 microns = 1 millimeter).
Obviously, gold-fill has a much thicker layer of gold, which directly affects the price of the piece. In the two tables below, we see for example that a gold-filled bracelet has at least 10 times more gold (30-120 microns) than a gold-plated bracelet (2.5-8 microns). This is why gold-plated pieces are so much more affordable.
[chart – gold filled]
But you also want your jewelry piece to keep its gold look for a long time – especially if it becomes a favorite that you wear often! Notice the difference in the “life expectancy” of the gold-plated compared with gold-filled jewelry pieces in these two tables.
Add to this the fact that in practice, the thickness of a gold layer in gold-plate is often much less than what you see in this table, which makes the metal correspondingly less durable... So is the bargain price really a bargain?
(2) In gold-filled metal there is an intermediate layer of gold alloy between the gold and the basic metal (which is why it’s called “gold-filled”). This layer is missing in gold-plated metal.
Both involve a base metal (brass, copper, or silver) fused with a top layer of gold, so the surface appearance is the same. But the difference becomes important for other reasons, as I personally discovered with my husband’s cuff links. More about that later...
There are two basic distinctions between gold-plate and gold-fill:
[chart – gold electro-plated]
(1) The thickness of the gold layer for gold-plated metal is 0.5-8 microns; for gold-filled metal it’s 5-120 microns (1000 microns = 1 millimeter).
Obviously, gold-fill has a much thicker layer of gold, which directly affects the price of the piece. In the two tables below, we see for example that a gold-filled bracelet has at least 10 times more gold (30-120 microns) than a gold-plated bracelet (2.5-8 microns). This is why gold-plated pieces are so much more affordable.
[chart – gold filled]
But you also want your jewelry piece to keep its gold look for a long time – especially if it becomes a favorite that you wear often! Notice the difference in the “life expectancy” of the gold-plated compared with gold-filled jewelry pieces in these two tables.
Add to this the fact that in practice, the thickness of a gold layer in gold-plate is often much less than what you see in this table, which makes the metal correspondingly less durable... So is the bargain price really a bargain?
(2) In gold-filled metal there is an intermediate layer of gold alloy between the gold and the basic metal (which is why it’s called “gold-filled”). This layer is missing in gold-plated metal.
