Karat is the unit used to quantify the purity of a gold alloy. The purest type of gold is 24k which possesses a metallic yellow color. Any alloy below 10k cannot actually be considered as gold. In jewelry accessories, 24k is 99.9% gold, 22k is 91.3% gold, 18k is 75% gold, 12k is 50% gold and 10k is 41.6% gold. Different people from different countries prefer different gold purities in their jewelry. In India, 22k gold jewelery is most liked.
Gold accessories come with various levels of purity and for a lot of people, determining the purity of jewelry can be a difficult task. Pure gold is soft and is not fit for most gold jewellery designs of accessories. In order for it to become suitable, it is combined with other metals such as zinc, silver, copper and palladium. This process is called “alloying”. Pure gold is then typically used for investments and exchange.
Other jewelry accessories are in the pure gold form while others are just gold plated. Gold plated and gold jewelries look precisely the same. A way to determine the purity of gold is to get its weight while holding it in your hand; but this is not accurate and most people cannot do this. As time passes, jewelry that is gold plated loses its luster and shine. On the other hand, gold filled jewelry remains lustrous as ever and never tarnishes. Gold filled jewelry is of course more precious and valuable than gold plated ones. Since anything less than 10k is not considered as gold, some jewelry items are made to look the same as 14k gold, thus a buyer would be deceived.
Pure gold or 22k gold has a metallic yellow color. With the exception of 22k gold jewelery and 24k, gold may be transformed into different colors after the alloying process; wherein different metals are mixed using different proportions of gold. A popular non-yellow gold is white gold.
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