What is 14k Gold?

Gold jewelry is always identified with a quality mark in order to let you know how much pure gold it contains.  As we’ve discussed in prior posts, gold is mined and then refined into it’s “pure” form which is usually 99.9% gold.  This is considered to be pure gold and is designated as 24 karat.  (You can learn more about why 24 and why karat here)  Pure gold is relatively soft for most jewelry applications and certainly for everyday wear, so the pure gold is alloyed with other metals to increase it’s hardness as well optimize other physical properties.  We discuss more about this alloying process here.

The amount of alloying metal added to pure golds results in the different karat golds that you may see online or in the jewelry store.  Depending on the color of the alloying metal that’s added, you can also obtain “white” gold or “rose” gold.  We will discuss more about how you get these colors in future posts. You can easily tell how much pure gold is contained in a jewelry item by dividing the number on the quality mark by 24.  Table 1 below shows the common karat golds in the United States as well as some common alloying metals.  Note that not all of them total up to 100% as alloys often contain small quantities of various other metals that are not shown. If we take 18 k gold for example, we can see that dividing 18 by 24 gives us 0.75 which means an item marked 18k would contain 75% pure gold and 25% other alloying metals, depending on the color of the necklace. 

In the United States, 10k is the lowest gold quality that can be marketed as “gold”, but that varies by country.  In the United Kingdom for example, the lowest allowable gold quality is 9k, while in Greece it’s 8k.  The most popular gold quality varies by country as well.  Consumers in the United States prefer 14k gold, but in India 22k is more popular and it contains roughly 57% more gold!  It can be fun to compare the style and color of gold jewelry when traveling abroad or compare your jewelry with your friends to see these differences in real life.  Let’s dig more into gold alloys in our next post.  Keep up to date on the latest with Casual Jeweler!

Photo courtesy of weddingringdepot.com

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