Caring for your jewellery
Thank you for choosing India Mee jewellery. Please read this information carefully before wearing your newly made bespoke jewels.
India Mee bespoke jewellery is crafted with exceptional care and quality to last for years to come. However, as with all fine jewellery pieces, thoughtful care is essential. Here’s how to keep your jewellery protected and radiant.
A few golden rules:
- As with all things, the finer the design, the gentler the care it requires—delicate styles require more mindful handling than chunkier designs.
- Diamonds, Sapphires and Rubies are hard gemstones, but not indestructible.
- Beauty products, lotions, perfumes, cleaning products and chemicals are bad for your stones and settings.
- Jewellery should be removed before physical activities to prevent damage, such as exercising, household chores, gardening, and lifting heavy objects.
- A simple clean with warm soapy water goes a long way in making your gemstones sparkle *avoid this cleaning method with pearl, opal and coral.
- Safe and soft storage for your jewellery is essential!
All treasured items, especially those we use often, will eventually show signs of wear. How we choose to treat them will affect their appearance over time.
For more in depth details about caring for your jewellery read on below.
When to take your jewellery off
We recommend removing your jewellery before applying makeup or skincare products, as various chemicals in the ingredients may cause build-up or wear to your pieces over time.
It’s really important to remove your jewellery during physical activities, such as sports and exercising, housework and gardening, or any heavy lifting and strenuous activity, as these can place stress on the piece and cause accidental damage.
We usually advise our customers to take their jewellery off when swimming, due to chemicals in pools and accidental loss as our hands usually shrink when they are cooler.
Wear with care
Diamonds are the hardest and more durable gemstone followed closely by sapphires and rubies, but they are not unbreakable. If knocked at a particular angle with enough force they can be chipped and damaged. Care must be taken to not knock your piece against any other hard material. *Also remember, diamonds can break diamonds.. So be careful when wearing two diamond rings side by side that the diamonds aren’t knocking, as well as when clapping your hands together whilst wearing diamond rings on each hand.
The same care applies to looking after the metal too, gold and platinum are hard wearing but can be dented or bent out of shape with a hard knock or if placed under excessive pressure, which risks the security of the gemstones as well as damaging the surface of the metal.
* Softer gemstones such as emeralds, opals, pearls and tanzanites require extra care when being worn, as they are more vulnerable to scratches and damage.
Cleaning your jewellery
Over time and regular wear gemstones and setting can gather dust, dirt and soap, making the gemstones (particularly paler coloured gemstones) appear dull and less sparkly. The good news is that a simple clean is all you’ll need to do to restore their brilliance!
To clean your jewellery and gemstones we recommend soaking in warm water with a few drops of gentle dish soap, and then giving your jewellery a gentle scrub with a very soft toothbrush (we recommended buying one especially for this purpose, a babies toothbrush works perfectly). Using a soft tooth brush is important so that the metal doesn’t get scratched. The grime will usually build up around and underneath the settings, take care during this process not to use any force or you could risk dislodging the gemstones. Then pat your ring dry with some kitchen roll and leave to dry naturally, before finally polishing with a jewellery cloth for a sparkling finish.
We recommend removing your jewellery before applying makeup or skincare products, as various chemicals in the ingredients may cause build-up or wear to your pieces over time.
For a full professional clean you can drop your jewellery into us, we will professional polish the metal and (depending on the gems) give your jewellery a sonic clean. Regular use in sonic machines can loosen gemstones and polishing metal too often can fasttrack metal thinning, so we recommend full professional cleans every 1-2 years, choosing a time before a big event is always nice!
Pearls and opals should not be soaked in water, to clean jewellery containing either of these should be done with just a jewellery cloth. Emeralds should only very briefly be soaked in water for cleaning.
Storing and travelling with your jewels
When you aren’t wearing your jewellery we recommend storing in a jewellery box, air tight is best, with sufficient padding to avoid damage, especially whilst travelling. Keep chains separate so that they don’t get tangled, and make sure that (especially pearls) items cannot come into contact with other metals to avoid scratches and damage.
Our top tip: Have soft lined little jewellery bowls dotted around your house (by the kitchen sink, in the bathroom and next to your bed) so that whenever you need to take your jewellery off you know it’s safe in one of the bowls, avoiding your treasured jewels getting knocked off surfaces and lost or damaged.
Checking your jewellery
It’s really important to keep an eye on your jewellery over time, to ensure claws and settings are in good condition, keeping the gemstones secure and safe, and watch out for links wearing away, or excess wear on the metal. You are always more than welcome to bring your jewellery to us for a check up. We will always repair jewellery that we have made (price dependant on individual piece and work required), we don’t offer repairs on jewellery we haven’t made ourselves.