White gold jewellery has become very popular amongst jewellery buyers. Many believe that white gold is different to that of normal gold. However, this is not the case. White gold is formed after gold is alloyed, which makes it appear white.
Gold is a yellow metallic element but it is too soft to be used for general jewellery purposes. Therefore it needs to be alloyed with other elements to make it sterner and more secure. The yellow colour of gold is caused by gold absorbing violet and blue light, but it reflects yellow and red light.
It is quite normal for gold to be mixed with other metals to produce an alloy. This is a mixture of two or more metals. Over the years, many people have preferred gold jewellery to maintain its purest form of colour. Therefore, most jewellery has been made using yellow gold alloys. The other types of metals that are used to produce gold alloys by mixing it with gold are copper and silver. White alloys are produced by mixing with metals such as zinc, nickel and palladium.
White gold alloys became popular in the early nineties as a substitute for platinum. This is because Platinum was, and still is quite expensive. In 1920, there were three separate patents filed for different types of white gold alloys. These used different components to produce the whitening effect. The commonest metal which causes a significant whitening effect in gold is nickel. It provides a good colour match for platinum but its colour matching in 14 and 9 carat alloys is considerably poor. It is also known to contain certain ingredients that can cause an allergic reaction when it comes into contact with skin.
Palladium is another metal that is used as a constituent of white gold alloys. Again though, this is quite an expensive metal and can even be more valuable than gold itself. One of the reasons that it is so expensive is because there are large proportions of scrap produced during jewellery manufacture. This involves expensive precious metal alloys, recycling and reclamation of the precious metals is very important. Therefore, when scrap contains high levels of expensive metals like palladium, there are extra costs involved in recovering it.
Silver would be an ideal substitute but it does not offer a good whitening effect. This also applies to copper but this metal is used to improve the ductility of most white gold alloys.
