How to choose jewellery colours
I recently had cause to consider ordering a significant piece of jewellery and around this time a reader asked for advice on selecting colours for this very purpose, so I thought I’d share that advice here. When investing heavily in a piece of jewellery or choosing one that you’ll want to wear daily, colour is an important consideration.
The old school of thought is that you should wear colours that match; flame red with flame red, cobalt blue with cobalt blue and millennial pink with millennial pink. Your hat matches your bag, matches your gloves, matches your shoes, matches your face mask kind of thing. A significant piece of jewellery would therefore have been one that matches colours you commonly wear.
A more contemporary take on co-ordinating colour is to understand what highlights YOU within a sartorial composition and work with that. Granted, it’s a little more complex but achieves a much more interesting result.
Anyone who has heard me explain colour theory will understand that there are three elements to colour: depth, temperature and saturation level. By choosing jewellery that has both a similar colour temperature and saturation level to those that you know work for you, your new piece will be spot on! But where to begin?
metals
Let’s begin with the metal. Expense aside, there are two things to consider when choosing your metal: colour and texture. In terms of colour, the most easily identifiable metals are silver, yellow gold and rose gold.
If your colouring is cool toned, silver will suit you. Though subtly different in appearance, there are alternatives to silver: white gold and pewter. White gold is more expensive than silver and pewter is more expensive again.
Texture guide for cool toned metals:
Silver: light and shiny
White gold: lustrous finish
Pewter: slightly deeper and more matte
There is more colour variation in white gold than in the others, as it depends on the composition, and particularly what degree of pure yellow gold is in the mix. If worn frequently and not treated, white gold can become warmer toned over time. You may or may not like this effect but it is worth considering before you decide on it.
All metals change over time. Silver can become tarnished and blacken but it is easily rectified using a silver cloth or silver polish. Pewter will develop a more matte patina over time due to the way it scratches. All metals scratch but are impacted differently. Pewter just happens to look more matte and less shiny over time. Again, you may or may not like this effect.
If your colouring is warm toned, yellow gold will suit you. Based on the purity of the gold, it can range from gently gold through to a golden yellow. The softer, lighter yellow golds will be stronger and more durable than a purer gold of higher karat. This is because gold is a soft metal so the purer the gold is, the weaker the piece.
For colouring that is gently warm, the less expensive but stronger 9 karat variety would be perfect. It sits closer to the cooler tones and is more lemon coloured than bright yellow. But if you have warm colouring that is bright (perhaps with auburn, golden, strawberry or copper hair) you might opt for the brighter gold that is closer to a mustard colour and is a higher karat.
Less expensive warm toned metals are brass and copper. Brass is more yellow and more durable than copper which is softer and more red in colour. It is copper that, when mixed with yellow gold (and sometimes silver), gives us rose gold.
Rose gold is interesting in that in terms of colour temperature, it can work equally well for either cool or warm toned people and those who are not obviously warm or cool. Rose gold was not popular for a long time but has been firmly back in fashion for almost a decade.
Again, the tones of the metal can vary depending on how much copper is in the mix. Rose gold with more copper will be brighter, pinker and less expensive because copper is not expensive. A softer toned rose gold will contain more yellow gold, and a metal that has just a soft pink blush to it will contain a higher content of silver.
Whatever colour metal you choose, these days you can also choose to have a shiny smooth textured finish or a less reflective matte finish (pictured). If you have softer colouring you may well be attracted to a matte texture as it gives a softer look. If you’re not sure whether to go shiny or matte, you could opt for a hammered or dimpled texture that can be either glossy or matte, but due to the dimpling, is less obvious.
There are metal colours to suit every colouring
Stones
Unless you already have a stone to work into your piece, choosing this element could potentially be much more difficult than selecting a metal as there is a huge variety of coloured stones, jewels and gems out there. Again, think about the temperature and saturation of your own colouring and choose a colour that will enhance that.
If you’re cool, white diamonds and white pearls and moonstones will all work beautifully, as will stones in all of the colours with cool undertones. Likewise, if you are warm toned, you will be well served by all of the stones with warmer undertones. If you’re warm toned and love the white stones mentioned above, you can have them work for you by choosing a warm metal setting.
Choosing gems in colours similar to those in your eyes, skin or hair will always look good but a note on hair colour; if yours is not natural, think about whether you’ll keep it longterm before investing in a jewel colour based on it.
If there are colours you know you’ll always wear, then stones that easily co-ordinate with these would be a great investment. In short, the principles for choosing jewel colours are the same as for choosing clothing colours.
what i did
Me being me, I like to recycle, re-use, remodel, repurpose and all of the other ‘re’s. I hate the idea of things not being used when they’re almost fit for purpose. I had an old yellow gold ring from the 1980s that was not my style at all so it sat in a box. I had an idea that the blue sapphire in the ring may have been worth preserving however. So I took it to the lovely Small Space Jewellers and they agreed it was.
I figured that I could get the stone to work for me by combining it with other elements that were more in my colour palette and to my taste. Because I wanted a warmer feel to the piece, I chose some red stones to add to it and chose rose gold with a matte finish to tie the elements together. Below is an image of the piece in progress.
A piece in the making at Small Space Jewellers