It’s easy to forget about cleaning your jewelry until your pieces start to look old, dull and tarnished. Once it’s time to spruce up your well-loved treasures, having a cleaning product on-hand that is quick and easy to use and reusable is the best way to keep your pieces looking new instead of throwing them in the back of your drawer. From your great-grandmother to the Today Show, people agree that jewelry cleaning cloths are one of the most effective and safest ways to clean your jewelry.
Our jewelry can take a beating, from sweat and dirt, to pollution and wear and tear that causes discoloration and tarnish over time. Using abrasive cleaners on jewelry can damage delicate or old pieces and negatively interact with newer items, like watches. That’s why we like using a jewelry cleaning cloth, which is designed to be gentle enough to work on fragile items but tough enough to get off years of dirt and grime.
As recommended by the jewelry experts on the Today Show, cleaning jewelry can be done simply with a cloth or using a light soap and water bath followed by a polish using a cleaning cloth. If you’re looking for something a little tougher than regular soap but still light enough that it won’t damage your valuables, we recommend these natural jewelry cleaners as the first step before the cleaning cloth.
To keep your silvers silver, your gold looking great, and your diamonds shining bright like, you guessed it, a diamond, try one of these jewelry cleaning cloths.
1. Simple Shine Premium Jewelry Cleaning Cloths
Get two cleaning cloths in one with the Simple Shine Premium Jewelry Cleaning Cloths, with the two-step process including an inner solution-treated cloth that removes dirt and tarnish, while the outer fabric makes jewelry look shiny and new. Simple Shine sells their cloths in a pack of three, with each 6” x 8” cloth packed individually, making them ideal for travel.
Pros: Unlike other jewelry cleaning cloths that use heavy smells, Simple Shine is odor-free and works with sterling silver, stainless steel, platinum, palladium, brass, copper and gold, making it perfect for jewelry, silverware, picture frames and more, including musical instrument and strings.
Cons: Simple Shine cloths are reusable but can’t be washed and have a limited number of uses.
2. Mayflower Pro Size Polishing Cleaning Cloth
For a cloth that cleans, shines, and protects, we recommend the Mayflower Pro Size Polishing Cleaning Cloth. Not only does the Mayflower help to remove rust and dullness from gold, silver, and platinum jewelry, it also leaves a layer of protection that helps to prevent further tarnishing. The two-step system of the Mayflower includes a side with cleaning ingredients and an untreated grey flannel side for polishing.
Pros: The Mayflower is the largest cleaning cloth on our list and measures 11” x 14”, making it ideal for large items like photo frames and silverware, and for fully covering small pieces like rings and coins.
Cons: Like the Simple Shine, the Mayflower can’t be placed in a washing machine. It also has black marks on the cloth after being used, but this is a sign of tarnish and rush being transferred off materials and onto the cloth.
3. Connoisseurs Gold Polishing Cloth
Get your gold jewelry shining like new with the Connoisseurs Gold Polishing Cloth. The extra-large cloth measures 11” x 14”, the same as the Mayflower Pro Size, and is an ultra-soft polishing cloth that is suitable for all types of gold.
Pros: Like Simple Shine and Mayflower, Connoisseurs uses a two-step cleaning system that includes an inner cloth that cleans and an outer fabric that shines and polishes.
Cons: The Connoisseurs sells a cleaning cloth that works for silver jewelry, but it must be purchased separately.