Mixing Gold Karats: Can You Wear Different Carats Together?

Question
Can you wear different carat gold rings together or will the lower carat wear the higher carat out quickly.

Answer
Hi, Donna.  You are not the first to wonder about wearing gold  rings of different carats together. Honestly, I would go ahead and wear the rings and not be too concerned about wear.  Certainly, when rings are worn together movement over time will cause wear on the touching sides.  This sort of wear is a given.

As for different carat making the wear worse, that is yet to be proven to me.  There is an assumption that lower karat rings are always harder metal than higher karat.  That is true above 18k for the higher karat ring but not always true up to 18k.

This web site provides a chart (scroll down) with tested hardness of gold metals.  The higher number is the harder metal.  Surprisingly, 18k is as hard or harder in some cases than the quite low 9 karat alloys (used in the UK). Is this always the case?  Can I say for sure your 10k ring is harder or softer than your 14k one? Can I say for sure you 14k ring is harder or softer than your 18k one? No, I cannot say for certain unless each ring is given an actual hardness test.  I would wear the rings together and not be overly worried about it.

http://www.18carat.co.uk/hardnessofgoldalloys.html


Even the hardness test will not tell the full answer about wear of the metal. Durability and hardness are not the same thing. Something can be tough and not so hard and something can be quite hard but not up to taking hard knocks very well.

As for karat gold, the differences are not significant enough from 18k down to worry about wearing one ring against another. That is my newer thinking on the subject. I have seen test results other than on the website provided which also confirmed the less than dramatic differences in hardness of lower and higher karat gold up to 18k.  Keep in mind, above 18k the gold definitely does test quite a bit softer and will take hard knocks by bending perhaps more than scratching but it will wear away more quickly, too.

Suggestion: If one ring is particularly thin, regardless of karat, it would not be wise to wear against another ring.  A thin ring only has so much life in it as it is and wear will certainly be much, much less if not worn against another piece of metal.

Donna, I know this breaks some of the common assumptions you will hear from folks at jewelry stores.  On another note, regardless of all the testing and thoughts on wear and hardness of the metals, in my over 30 years of experience have not had a customer who as mentioned a higher karat ring being worn out by a wearing against a lower karat.  What we generally see in real life is fairly even wear on both rings, regardless of karat if 18k or below.

God Bless and Peace.  Thomas.