Your wedding ring can go through a lot. If you put it on first thing in the morning and take it off just before you’re ready to call it a night, those hours add up. While you don’t want to take it off, you want to avoid unnecessary damage as well. The reality is that scratches are a risk you run when wearing your ring often. However, there are some mitigation strategies you can employ.
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Can You Prevent Scratches on Your Wedding Ring?
The ugly truth is that you can’t completely prevent scratches from happening. That key word, though, is completely. You can significantly reduce the likelihood that your wedding ring gets scratched through the use of a few simple strategies. While each of these strategies is helpful on its own, your best bet is to combine them for maximum possible prevention.
How to Prevent Scratches
Choose Your Metal Carefully
This is more of a preventative option. If you have yet to purchase your wedding ring, this is the most important point on this list. If you’re really worried about preventing damage, there are always silicone rings. One of the best strategies to prevent scratches is to wear a silicone ring for everyday activities and bring out your nicer ring for formal events.
Not all metals scratch equally, though. For example, soft metals like gold can be damaged relatively easily. Super hard metals like tungsten are much more scratch-resistant. While tungsten is great, hard metals are nearly impossible to resize, while softer metals are much more forgiving. If that’s not a concern, you should consider tungsten or other hard metals.
Store it in a Jewelry Box
While it won’t prevent all scratches, having a good jewelry box is a good tool. One of the quickest ways to scratch your wedding ring is to put it down in different places throughout the house. Having a jewelry box not only keeps it safer, but also prevents the inevitable search for your lost ring that you put in a drawer.
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Routinely Clean it
While it’s not perfect, routine cleaning will prevent tiny scratches from accumulating. It won’t make your ring any stronger or prevent your ring from severe scratches, but it will extend the life of your ring and take care of tiny imperfections before you ever notice them.
Take It Off
Heading to the gym? Take off your ring. Doing laundry? Take off your ring. Going to the pool? You guessed it. Sometimes, the best preventative maintenance is just not wearing your ring. While there are tons of options out there when it comes to wedding rings for women, almost none of them play nicely with sweat, water or exercise. That is, of course, besides silicone rings.
Just Pay Attention
It sounds trite, but it’s true. There’s only so much you can do to prevent scratching your wedding ring. If you want to minimize the possibility that you scratch your ring, you just have to be vigilant about it. Pay attention to counter edges and furniture that juts out. If you have a prong setting on your ring, this is even more important, as you can damage the setting as well as scratch the ring.
How Often Should You Clean Your Ring?
While there are differing opinions out there, the general consensus is that you should clean your ring every one to two weeks. You don’t need to do too much — just a simple cleaning at home is plenty. However, you should also consider getting a professional cleaning once or twice a year to keep your ring looking its best.
What Can You Do If Your Wedding Ring Gets Scratched?
Polishing
For really minor scratches, you can probably do this yourself. There are DIY options out there that use household cleaners, but the simplest option is to buy a home ring cleaning kit. For scratches that are a bit more stubborn, you can take your ring to a local jeweler for a good polishing. Unfortunately, deeper scratches aren’t always able to be polished away.
Replating
For things that can’t be polished away, you’ve got replating as an option. Of course, that’s only going to work if you have a simple ring, but still. Ornate designs can’t always be replated, so simple bands have an edge in this regard.
Replating is an extra layer of care for your ring and should reset it to look like new, though it’s going to be a bit more work and isn’t a thing you should try to DIY.
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Unfortunately, there’s no magic way to prevent all scratches. You could just never wear your ring. That’s about the only way to prevent all scratches. Where’s the fun in that, though? As long as you’re cognizant about your ring’s health and you clean it routinely, you’re maximizing your chances of having a scratch-free ring for a lifetime.
