7 Mistakes That Damage Diamond Earrings (And How to Avoid Them)

A customer once brought in a pair of diamond studs she’d worn every day for three years. The stones still sparkled beautifully under direct light, but in softer, ambient conditions — the kind you actually live in — they looked flat and grey. The culprit wasn’t a cheap diamond or poor cut quality. It was a film of hairspray, body lotion, and residual soap that had built up over months, sealing around each stone and effectively turning the pavilion facets into a mirror reflecting nothing useful. A ten-minute clean fixed it. Three years of dulling could have been avoided entirely.

Most damage to diamond earrings happens slowly, through habits so ordinary they don’t feel like mistakes at all. This article goes through the seven most common errors — and explains not just what to do differently, but why the damage happens in the first place.

Mistake 1: Cleaning with Toothpaste

This one is worth addressing directly because it circulates endlessly as folk wisdom. Toothpaste feels like a sensible cleaning agent — it’s mildly abrasive, it whitens, it freshens. For teeth, that mild abrasiveness is the point. For diamond earring settings, it’s the problem.

Most toothpastes have a Relative Dentin Abrasivity (RDA) score between 50 and 150. Gold is a soft metal (typically 18ct or 9ct in UK jewellery), and the abrasive particles in toothpaste will scratch it over time, dulling the finish of prong settings, claw edges, and the inner surfaces of bezel mounts. White gold and platinum fare better, but neither is immune to repeated abrasive contact.

The diamond itself won’t be scratched — it’s the hardest natural material on earth, rating 10 on the Mohs scale. But the setting holding that diamond absolutely can be. And a scratched, dull setting changes how light enters and exits the stone, affecting the very thing you bought the earring for.

The alternative is simple: a small bowl of warm water with a few drops of mild washing-up liquid, a soft toothbrush (the kind sold for babies works well), and gentle circular motions around and beneath the stone. Rinse under warm running water and pat dry with a lint-free cloth. That’s it. No toothpaste required.

Mistake 2: Wearing Diamond Earrings in the Swimming Pool

Chlorine is a corrosive chemical. At pool concentrations, it won’t dissolve your earrings on contact, but it accelerates a process called stress corrosion cracking in gold alloys — particularly 9ct gold, which contains enough copper and silver in its alloy to react. Over time, repeated chlorine exposure weakens prong settings at a microscopic level, making them more likely to crack or bend.

The same applies to the sea. Saltwater is less aggressively corrosive than chlorinated water but carries its own risks: salt particles accumulate in settings, and the physical force of waves or diving can stress delicate claw prongs in ways that are difficult to detect until a stone shifts or falls out.

Lab-grown diamonds and natural diamonds behave identically here — the stone isn’t the concern. If you’re curious about the broader differences between those two categories, The Diamond Stud Earring Guide That Actually Matters covers that in useful detail.

The habit to build is simply removing earrings before you get in the water. A small dish by the pool bag takes thirty seconds to establish as a routine.

Mistake 3: Storing Multiple Pairs Loose Together

Open a drawer in most people’s bedrooms and you’ll find a jumble of jewellery — necklaces tangled around earrings, studs rolling freely against hoops, all of it knocking together whenever the drawer opens. It looks chaotic, and it is.

Diamond is the hardest material on the Mohs scale, which means diamond earrings will scratch absolutely everything they touch — other gemstones, other metal settings, and the surfaces of gem-quality stones in neighbouring pieces. A pair of emerald studs stored next to diamond earrings won’t survive long without surface abrasion. Even two pairs of diamond earrings stored loose together will gradually scratch each other’s metal settings.

The fix doesn’t require an expensive jewellery armoire. Individual small pouches, the cardboard boxes earrings come in, or a divided tray with separate compartments all work. The goal is simply that each pair doesn’t contact any other piece of jewellery.

Mistake 4: Applying Perfume or Hairspray While Wearing Earrings

Perfume contains alcohol, solvents, and fixatives that bond to the surface of gemstones. A single application doesn’t matter. Accumulated over weeks and months, these compounds create an invisible film across the table and pavilion of a stone, reducing the amount of light that enters and exits cleanly.

Hairspray is worse — the polymers in aerosol sprays are specifically designed to create a fixing film, and they do exactly that on the facets of your diamonds. The dull, grey appearance described at the start of this article is almost always hairspray or a combination of hairspray and perfume residue.

The rule is applied easily: earrings go on last. Perfume, hairspray, dry shampoo, and any other aerosol or spray product before earrings are fitted. The slight inconvenience of putting earrings in at the end of getting ready prevents the gradual optical degradation that makes expensive earrings look cheap.

Mistake 5: Skipping the Professional Check

Prong settings loosen gradually. This is not a design flaw — it’s physics. The metal prongs holding a diamond in place flex microscopically each time an earring is put on and taken off, knocked against something, or subject to any force. Over months and years, this flexion accumulates. A prong that was secure when the earring left the workshop may have shifted enough to allow stone movement eighteen months later.

The problem is that loose prongs are almost impossible to detect by touch or casual visual inspection. The stone feels secure right up until it isn’t. And when a prong fails completely, the stone tends to fall out at the worst possible moment — into a sink, a bag, or somewhere it’s never found.

Jewellers typically recommend a professional check every twelve to eighteen months. A qualified jeweller will examine settings under magnification, test for stone movement, check for metal fatigue in prong tips, and re-tip or re-tighten anything that needs attention. This service is usually quick and inexpensive — far less than replacing a lost stone.

It’s worth noting that where you bought the earrings affects how easy this is to arrange. Specialist boutiques that focus specifically on diamond and gemstone earrings — the kind that handle custom settings and understand the specifics of different setting styles — tend to offer better ongoing service than generalist high street chains.

Mistake 6: Using Ultrasonic Cleaners Indiscriminately

Ultrasonic cleaners are genuinely useful for certain diamonds. They work by creating cavitation bubbles in a liquid solution — the bursting of those bubbles dislodges dirt in ways that a brush cannot reach. For a brilliant-cut diamond in a simple prong setting, they’re often fine with proper supervision.

But ultrasonic cleaners can crack or shatter stones with existing inclusions — particularly fracture-filled diamonds or stones with significant internal feathers (fractures that reach the surface). The vibrations that dislodge dirt also stress existing fractures. This is equally true for moissanite that has been clarity-treated, and for coloured gemstones, many of which are too fragile for ultrasonic cleaning regardless of treatment.

The broader issue is that most people using home ultrasonic cleaners don’t know whether their stone is fracture-filled, heavily included, or otherwise unsuitable. The machine doesn’t distinguish. If you’re using one at home, stick to stones you know are untreated and settings you know are secure. When in doubt, the warm water and soft brush method is safe for everything.

Mistake 7: Treating Diamond Earrings as Indestructible Because “Diamonds Are the Hardest Material”

This one is the most insidious mistake because it’s rooted in a half-truth.

Diamonds are the hardest natural material on earth — hardness being resistance to scratching. That property is real and significant. But hardness is not the same as toughness. Toughness is resistance to fracture and impact. And diamonds, despite their hardness, have relatively poor toughness because of their cleavage planes — specific directions in the crystal structure along which the stone can split cleanly under a sharp blow.

Drop a diamond earring stud onto a hard tile floor at the wrong angle, and the stone can chip along a cleavage plane. Hit the stone against a granite worktop while washing dishes. Catch it on a door frame while rushing. None of these require exceptional force; they require the right (or rather, wrong) angle.

This misunderstanding extends to the metal settings. People who know their stone is hard sometimes assume the entire earring is durable and handle it roughly — dropping pairs carelessly, pressing backs on with more force than necessary, bending posts slightly to get them through older piercing holes. Each of these adds mechanical stress to settings designed for moderate, careful handling.

Understanding that your earrings have both hard and vulnerable elements changes how you handle them. Take them off before gardening, DIY, or any activity that involves impact risk. Remove them before sleeping — especially hoops or dangles that can catch in hair or pillow fabric and exert levering force on the post and setting.

Putting It Together

The pattern running through all seven mistakes is the same: diamond earrings aren’t fragile in the way that a china plate is fragile, but they’re not indestructible either. The settings are metal. The stones, despite their hardness, have structural vulnerabilities. And the brilliance that makes them worth buying depends on clean, undamaged facets and secure, intact prongs.

None of the care habits described here are difficult. Most require only a small shift in routine — earrings off before swimming, on last after hairspray, stored separately, checked annually. The cleaning method takes ten minutes. The storage solution costs next to nothing.

Given how much diamond earrings cost — and how much margin is often built into retail prices at high street chains — protecting that investment through basic care is probably the best-value thing you can do with jewellery.

The earrings most people keep for decades aren’t necessarily the most expensive ones they’ve owned. They’re the ones that were looked after.