If you love wearing jewelry, you need to know how to clean earrings, especially stainless steel earrings and sterling silver earrings. If your collection is mostly authentic jewelry, it is critical also that you know how to clean your 14k gold earring. Today we are going to teach you the ways that you can clean different kinds of stud earrings with different cleaning agents.
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How To Clean Earring Stud?
Common stud earrings are earrings that don’t have precious or semiprecious stones. This being the case, it is not complicated to clean them and you can go through several pairs easily by using hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is a good homemade jewelry cleaner and common disinfectant, which also makes it perfect for removing bacteria and gunk from earrings.
Step 1: Add Hydrogen Peroxide and Soak Your Earring Studs
The basic cleaning process goes like this: grab a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a small plastic/non-reactive bowl. Pour just enough of the hydrogen peroxide so that it fully covers the bottom of the bowl. As for the size bowl, you don’t need a very big one – if it sits perfectly on your palm, that’s a pretty good size already.
Pure hydrogen peroxide works best when the material that needs to be cleaned is soaked well in it. If you regularly brush your stud earrings at least once a month, soak them in pure hydrogen peroxide for about 15 to 20 minutes.
If however, your stud earrings are relatively old and they have not been cleaned in any way for six months to a year, feel free to soak the earrings for 45 minutes to an hour. Older earrings that have not been cleaned before tend to have tougher gunk that can be harder to remove.
Step 2: Brush the Earrings sightly
After properly soaking the stud earrings, grab a soft-bristled toothbrush and start scrubbing away at the earrings. Be sure to get between the nooks and crannies. If all has gone well, you should be able to see bits of gunk and dirt coming off on the toothbrush. Although you’re cleaning common earrings, let the toothbrush do the work, there’s no need to brush hard as this may damage the surface of the metal.
Step 3: Rinse Them
When the earrings are now as clean as they can be, it’s time to rinse them. The simplest way to rinse them is soaking them for a few seconds in a small bowl of warm or lukewarm water. If you feel that this won’t be sufficient to remove the gunk you brushed off, feel free to run lukewarm water from the tap for a few seconds.
Step 4: Air-dry Them
After rinsing, grab some paper towels and fold them so you’ll have a nice absorbent layer for your earrings. Place the freshly rinsed stud earrings there and air-dry them naturally. Completely air-drying jewelry can take up to a full hour, depending on the size and complexity of the designs. Trust us; you wouldn’t want to place your freshly cleaned earrings back into their jewelry box even with a little moisture in them.
How To Clean Earrings with Gemstones and Precious Metals?
The cleaning process for gold/silver/titanium earrings with precious or semiprecious stones is slightly different. Assuming that any gemstones you have on your stud earrings are not porous, you can use the method described in this section.
This time, instead of cleaning with hydrogen peroxide, we are going to clean with ammonia and a bit of water.
Step 1: Add Some Ammonia with Warm Water into a Bowl
Get a small plastic bowl and combine two ounces of ammonia and then fill the bowl up to the halfway point with clean, warm water. Do not touch ammonia with your bare hands. Use either sterile gloves or kitchen gloves when working with ammonia solution, as this substance can cause mild burns on the skin.
Step 2: Place the Earrings and Soak 20 Mins
Place all non-porous stud earrings in the solution and let everything soak for 20 minutes. Make sure that you drop them in gently so they don’t splash. Let the ammonia solution work on the earrings, and feel free to shake the bowl a little to help loosen the gunk.
Step 3: Brush the Earrings
After soaking, grab a soft-bristled toothbrush and clean each earring individually. Now when you are dealing with precious metals like gold, you have to be extra careful and gentle because gold for one, can get scratched pretty easily. The same goes for shiny silver studs – don’t scrub hard. Let the toothbrush do all the work.
Step 4: Wash the Earrings to Remove Ammonia
After brushing, fill a bowl with some warm water and soak the earrings for a few minutes to remove the ammonia. Alternatively, you can use warm water from the tap to wash the earrings. Get some absorbent paper towels and place them, folded, on the table.
Step 5: Dry the EarringsÂ
Let the earrings dry naturally on the paper towels, before returning the earrings to storage.
How to Clean Earrings with Porous Stones?
Some gemstones are more sensitive to moisture because they are naturally porous, so it’s not a good idea to clean them with ammonia and hydrogen peroxide, as these two substances may be too strong or potent for these gemstones. Instead of using hydrogen peroxide or ammonia, we’re going to use mild dish soap instead.
Fill a bowl to the halfway mark with warm water, and then add three drops of mild dish soap to the mix. Once mixed, get a small, clean cloth and soak a corner with the cleaning solution.
Use this moist corner of the cloth to gently rub clean the earrings. We’re going to do this because the gemstones have to remain relatively dry throughout the cleaning process. Use the cloth to get into the crannies, while avoiding the gemstone. Be sure to clean metal that holds the gemstone in place, too, as there can be a lot of dirt and grime there.
After the initial cleaning with the cloth to remove most of the dirt, proceed to clean the rest of the earrings with a super soft-bristled toothbrush. Again, make sure that you avoid the gemstone. Air-dry the earrings on the table with some paper towels and return the earrings to storage.
More articles you may interest:
Best Way on How to Clean Earring Backs? All Backing Applied
How to Clean Pandora Jewelry at Home?
How to Clean Tiffany Necklace or Ring at Home?
Can You Use Hydrogen Peroxide to Clean Jewelry? (Gold, Silver & Costume Jewelry)
How to Clean Stainless Steel Jewelry?
