Why sterling silver tarnishes, and how to get it off
Sterling silver tarnishes. All of it, everywhere, regardless of who made it or what you paid. A piece that has gone dull or grey in a drawer is not faulty and it is not cheap silver. It is silver behaving exactly as silver behaves.
What is worth knowing is why it happens, what speeds it up, and how to take it off without damaging the piece.
Tarnish is not rust
Rust is iron corroding, and it eats into the metal. Tarnish is a surface reaction, and it sits on top.
Sterling silver is 92.5 percent silver, with the remainder usually copper for strength. Both react with sulfur compounds in ordinary air. The result is a thin layer of silver sulfide, which starts as a faint warm yellow, moves through brown, and ends up close to black if it is left long enough. The silver underneath is untouched. Nothing has been lost. You are looking at a film a few molecules thick.
This is why a piece can come out of a jewelry box looking ruined and be back to itself in two minutes.
What speeds it up
Tarnish is not really about time. It is about what the silver is sitting next to.
- Still, humid air. A closed box in a damp bathroom is the worst place in a house to keep silver. Moisture carries the reaction along.
- Wool, felt and rubber. All three release sulfur. A rubber band around a stack of rings will leave a dark line exactly where it sat.
- Eggs, onions and mustard. High in sulfur. This is why silver cutlery goes patchy after a brunch.
- Chlorine and salt water. Pools and the sea are harder on silver than a month of ordinary wear.
- Some lotions, and some skin. Body chemistry genuinely varies. Two people can wear the same ring and one will see tarnish in a fortnight while the other never does.
The counterintuitive part is that wearing silver keeps it bright. Skin contact and movement polish it constantly. The pieces that go dark are the ones you save for special occasions.
How to take it off
For solid sterling silver, in this order.
- A polishing cloth. A treated cloth takes light tarnish off in under a minute. Short strokes in one direction, and turn to a clean part of the cloth as it greys. This is the whole answer for most pieces.
- Warm water and a drop of unscented washing up liquid. For pieces with texture or a chain that has gone dull in the links. Soft toothbrush, rinse in clean water, dry completely with a soft cloth before it goes away. Water left in a link is where the next tarnish starts.
- Leave the deep cases to us. Heavily blackened silver, or anything with a stone or a pearl set into it, is worth sending to a jeweler rather than experimenting on.
What not to do
Silver dip is the one to avoid. It strips tarnish chemically in seconds, and it keeps going after that. It pits the surface over time, it flattens the contrast in a hammered or textured piece, and it will ruin a pearl or a porous stone outright.
Toothpaste and baking soda are abrasive. They work, in the sense that sandpaper works. Both leave fine scratches that dull the piece permanently.
And the distinction that catches people out: a polishing cloth is right for solid sterling and wrong for gold vermeil. Vermeil is a layer of gold over silver, and a polishing cloth is mildly abrasive, so on vermeil it removes the thing you are trying to keep. Vermeil gets a soft dry cloth and nothing else. If you are not sure which a piece is, it is listed under Materials on its product page.
How to stop it happening in the first place
Storage does more than cleaning ever will.
Keep pieces dry, out of the bathroom, in a pouch or a lined box with one piece per compartment so nothing rubs. An anti-tarnish strip in the box absorbs the sulfur before the silver gets to it, and costs almost nothing. Put jewelry on last, after perfume, sunscreen and lotion, and take it off before you swim or exercise.
Then wear it. Silver that lives on a person stays bright without being cleaned at all.
The exception: textured pieces
Some of our pieces are hammered, or cast with a deliberately irregular surface. On those, the shadow sitting in the low points is what makes the texture read at all. Tarnish gathers there first, and polishing every last bit of it out flattens the piece into plain metal.
Clean the raised surfaces and leave the recesses alone.
Everything we make in silver is recycled sterling, and every product page lists exactly what a piece is made of. If you are looking at something in your own jewelry box and cannot tell what you are dealing with, reply and ask. We would rather answer than have you reach for the dip.