Gold, Platinum, Silver or Titanium: Choosing a Ring Metal

Metal choice affects how a ring looks, how it wears, how much it costs and whether it can ever be resized.

Yellow gold

Traditional, warm and easy to work. Purity is measured in carats: 9ct is 37.5 per cent gold and harder wearing, 14ct is 58.5 per cent, 18ct is 75 per cent and richer in colour but softer. Gold is straightforward to resize and repair, which makes it a safe long-term choice.

White gold

Yellow gold alloyed with white metals and usually plated with rhodium for brightness. The plating wears through every one to three years and needs reapplying, which is a modest ongoing cost. Some white gold alloys contain nickel and can irritate sensitive skin.

Rose gold

Gold alloyed with copper. The higher the copper content, the pinker the colour and the harder the metal. Rose gold does not need plating and holds its colour indefinitely, though the copper content makes it slightly more prone to stress cracking during resizing.

Platinum

Dense, naturally white and highly durable. It does not need plating, and when it scratches the metal displaces rather than wearing away, so it develops a soft patina rather than losing material. It is heavier and more expensive than gold, and repair work requires a jeweller equipped for its high melting point.

Sterling silver

Affordable and bright, but soft and prone to tarnish. Excellent for fashion rings and for testing a size or style before committing. Not usually recommended for a ring worn daily for decades.

Titanium

Very light, very strong, hypoallergenic and inexpensive. The trade-off is that it cannot be soldered conventionally, so resizing is limited or impossible and stone setting is restricted.

Tungsten carbide and ceramic

Extremely scratch resistant and inexpensive, but genuinely non-resizable and brittle under sharp impact. Buy only if you are confident about the size and happy to replace rather than repair. Many sellers offer a lifetime size-exchange scheme, which is worth confirming in writing.

Allergies

Nickel is the usual culprit. Platinum, palladium, titanium and high-carat gold are the safest choices for sensitive skin. If a ring leaves a green mark, that is usually copper reacting with skin acids rather than a poor-quality metal, and a rhodium or clear lacquer coating will stop it.

Sizing implications

Choose the metal before you finalise the size, because non-resizable metals leave no margin for error. Measure at the end of the day, allow for band width, and confirm the inside diameter in millimetres with the seller before ordering anything in tungsten, ceramic or titanium.