Caring for Ruby Jewelry

How To Best Care For Rubies

To guarantee the longevity and lasting beauty of your ruby, you will need to know how to care for it.  A few basic tips can help you maintain the beauty, luster , and brilliance of the stone so that it can last for generations to come.

Rubies are incredibly durable.  They have a hardness of 9 on the Mohs scale, which means they are very resistant to scratching.   They are not as hard as diamonds, but are just a step below on the scale.  Diamonds are the only other precious stone that can scratch your ruby, so you will want to keep them stored separately in your jewelry box.

How To Treat Your Ruby Jewelry

The best way to clean ruby jewelry is with warm soapy water or a warm soapy cloth.  There is no need to soak your rubies in soapy water, and you’ll want to avoid harsh detergents.  Never soak rubies in any type of strong solvents such as alcohol, acetone, or paint thinner.

While in most cases it’s not necessary to remove your ruby from its setting in order to have repairs done to your jewelry, it is always important to have repairs done by a professional jeweler. It’s recommended to have your ruby jewelry checked every 6-12 months depending on the amount of wear and tear on the jewelry. You’ll want to have the jeweler check the integrity of the jewelry to make sure that gemstones are secure in their mount.  Losing any gemstone is a heartbreaking experience, and a quality ruby can be exceptionally hard to replace. 

The following are some great common practices to get into when thinking about your ruby jewelry:

• Store jewelry in separate envelopes or pouches.
• Check your jewelry often to make sure the stones are not loose and the mountings look secure.
• Avoid wearing jewelry when you are doing housework, gardening, playing sports, or around drains like when showering, doing dishes, or washing hands.
• Use appropriate cleaning methods and materials.
• Do not subject your jewelry to sudden extreme temperature changes.

We’ve covered many angles concerning rubies and ruby jewelry, and there are a few more concepts that would be helpful for the consumer to know. We cover those next with Gemstone and Jewelry Terms.