It is often confusing while understanding and differentiating the terminologies like carat and karat while purchasing jewelleries. However, both the terminologies are used in the jewellery industry to measure the jewellery. But, “carat” is specifically used to measure the weight of the diamond and other gems whereas “karat” is used to measure the purity of the golden ornaments. If you are not a jewellery connoisseur or not working in jewellery industry, it is not easy to understand the measurement of a carat or karat and possibly get confused and fall prey to cheating in your purchase of jewellery. Get into the Atelier Lou for purchasing the reliable jewellery of your choice with all the perfect understanding of what you are purchasing.
As far as karat is concerned, gold is originally a very soft metal in its pure form. Therefore, gold is too delicate and, in a way, unfit to use in its pure form because of its very soft nature. Eventually, the pure soft gold is alloyed or mixed with other metals to enhance its strength or hardness and resilience. The metals normally alloyed with the pure soft gold are silver or copper or zinc or nickel. This mixture of metals with the pure form of soft gold is measured by karats. They can be mixed by 14 karats or 18 karats, or 22 karats, but the most ideal and common mixing is 14 karats or 18 karats.
Now, when you determine which karat of gold you need is a tricky question. It all depends upon how often you will be wearing gold jewellery and what you will be doing while wearing the jewellery. You also need to determine what colour you prefer and your budget before selecting the karat.
The 24-karat gold is considered as the 100% pure gold and the best gold to buy. But it may not be best because it is easily bent and scratched. Often the 24-karat gold is unfit for daily wearing and doing housework or any other manual work. If you want to wear 24-karat bracelet and do a bit of house cleaning, you will repent either for the bracelet or for the house cleaning. However, if you want to wear 24-karat jewellery for a red-carpet occasion, that may be a different story. Secondly, 24-karat gold is expensive. 22-karat gold is just a mixture of 8% alloyed metal which makes your jewellery shiny, strong and more durable than your 24-karat pure gold. However, you can never take it granted of its strength because it is still softer and needs your care.
