How is white gold made?

Have you ever admired the silver-white gleam of white gold jewelry and thought to yourself, “how did they make that?” Well, it turns out that alchemy still exists in this day and age – just not in the way we imagine.

White gold is actually a combination of yellow gold and other metals like silver, palladium, zinc, or nickel. It’s made by taking pure 24 karat yellow gold and mixing it with alloying elements to create an 18 karat piece of jewelry. To give it the shiny, silver-white color that we often associate with white gold, jewelers plate the gold with a coating of rhodium.

But why use yellow gold instead of creating white gold from scratch? That’s because yellow gold has a higher concentration of malleability than other metals used for jewelry making. This means that when combined with other metals it can be shaped into various forms more easily than any other type of metal. So when mixed correctly with alloying elements like silver, zinc or nickel, the result is a beautiful piece of white gold jewelry.