What looks like solid gold, but isn’t?

When shopping for jewellery, you may notice that there are many categories of jewellery with the phrase “gold” in its name - some common ones you might see include “gold plated”, “gold filled”, “gold vermeil”, and “solid gold” or “karat gold”. It’s important to understand what the different terms mean. 

For a piece of jewellery to be classified as “fine”, it needs to fulfill a certain quantity of precious metals. For jewellery pieces to be classified “solid gold” or “karat gold”, the item will need to have at least 37.5% of solid gold content.  

The confusion arises as there are many types of gold-toned jewellery -- pieces that look like gold, and are sometimes sold as versions of gold, or as a substitute, but aren’t. Here, we distill down the different substitutes in the market so you can distinguish between gold and gold-toned jewellery, and better understand what best suits your needs.

Learn more about maker’s marks to better understand what percentage of gold your karat gold jewellery contains.