I created this article because of a conversation I have constantly: a client tells me they're allergic to almost everything except gold. Or they tell me their earrings from a regular jeweler are gold, so they're already good quality.
Both of these come from the same misunderstanding, so let's clear it up properly.
Carat measures purity, not quality on its own
Carat (or karat) measures how much of a piece is actually gold, out of 24 parts.
24 carat = pure gold
18 carat = 75% gold
14 carat = roughly 58.3–58.5% gold
9 carat = 37.5% gold
Gold stamps follow the same logic, just shown per 1000 instead of per 24. 18kt becomes "750", since that's 750 parts gold out of 1000. Other marks you'll sometimes see on jewelry relate to origin, era, collection, or the maker's own stamp.
You might assume there's a universal legal minimum for something to be called "gold" — there isn't. It varies hugely by country. In the US, 10 carat is the legal floor. In France, the UK, Austria, Portugal, and Ireland, 9 carat is allowed. In Denmark, Germany, and Greece, it drops as low as 8 carat. So when a jeweler sells you 9kt gold and calls it gold, that's completely legal in most of Europe — it's just not the same thing as what we use for piercings.
So what fills the rest of the alloy?
Gold on its own is too soft for jewelry, so it always gets mixed with other metals. The general formula looks like:
Gold + zinc + copper + (silver, nickel, or palladium)
This is the part that actually matters: every goldsmith blends their own alloy. Two pieces both stamped "14kt" can be made completely differently — different ratios, different secondary metals, different quality. The carat number tells you how much gold is in there. It says nothing about what the rest of the alloy actually is, or how safe that combination is to wear in a fresh wound.
In the high-end piercing industry — and the difference between high-end and mass-market piercing supply is genuinely its own topic — we use palladium or other anti-allergenic metals for the remainder of the alloy, and the gold itself has to be at least solid 14 carat. That keeps the proportion of other metals low enough to stay safe, while still leaving the gold firm enough to shape into proper jewelry.
Higher carat means more gold and a softer, smoother metal. Lower carat means more alloy and a harder one. In this industry, we only use solid gold — never gold-plated. The plating wears away over time, sheds into your piercing channel, and you have no way of verifying what metal is hiding underneath it. That "mystery metal" frequently contains nickel or silver, neither of which belongs in a healing wound.
This is also why piercing-grade 14kt gold isn't the same as jeweler 14kt gold
This is the part most people don't realise: 14kt gold from a regular jeweler and 14kt gold from an APP-approved piercing brand are not the same quality, even though the carat number matches. For a bracelet or a ring sitting on top of healed skin, regular jeweler gold is completely fine. For something that needs to sit inside a fresh wound for months while it heals, the alloy composition matters enormously more — and that's exactly what gets tested.
Organisations like the APP have volunteers experienced in chemical testing who go through suppliers' jewelry piece by piece, checking for unsafe alloys. As an APP Benelux member, I only work with suppliers that have already been tested and approved this way — which means I can tell you with confidence that there's no nickel or silver hiding in anything I sell.
How yellow, white, and rose gold are made
The color comes entirely from the ratio of alloy metals:
Balanced alloy → warm yellow gold
More copper → red or rosé gold
More palladium or nickel → white gold
More silver → green gold
Adding rhodium → can darken gold toward black
If a piece is sold as 14kt yellow gold but looks unusually pale or unusually intensely yellow, the alloy probably isn't balanced the way it should be — often a sign of extra nickel sneaked in to cut costs. You'd be paying gold prices without getting the safety that's supposed to come with it.
One more thing: stamps shouldn't touch your skin
This is something you'll mostly run into with jewelry from regular jewelers, fashion brands, or small boutiques that have started their own "piercing" line without any background in piercing or wound care. They know how to make pretty jewelry — that's their actual expertise. Making jewelry that's safe to heal a wound with isn't something they're trained for, and it shows.
In proper piercing jewelry, gold stamps should never sit anywhere that makes contact with your piercing channel. A stamp creates a tiny crevice, and crevices hold bacteria — exactly what you don't want inside a healing wound. If you're buying jewelry elsewhere and it's stamped, make sure that stamp isn't positioned where it'll actually touch your skin.
And be careful of brands that give you an elaborate explanation for why their gold is cheaper. Gold is a globally priced commodity — its value doesn't change because one company explains it differently. It's like someone telling you their €5 note is worth more than yours. It isn't. If the price is genuinely lower, the alloy has been cut somewhere, or the goldsmiths have been paid less. Either way, that's not a discount you want on something that has to heal inside your skin.
A quick note on plating, vermeil, gold fill, and PVD
You'll see these terms used loosely, but they're not the same thing.
Gold plating is the thinnest and cheapest — a layer of real gold with no required minimum thickness, applied over a base metal through electroplating. It wears off relatively fast.
Gold vermeil is a step up: a sterling silver base with a gold layer chemically bonded to it through electroplating, sometimes with a thin palladium layer in between to help the gold bond properly. Legally it only needs to be 10kt gold and a minimum thickness — but better vermeil brands go much higher than that. The Christine Bekaert collection we carry, for example, is 18kt gold vermeil over sterling silver, plated significantly thicker than the legal requirement.
We carry this collection for a few real reasons, not just price. The quality is genuinely exceptional for what it is, and being vermeil at this level actually makes certain designs possible that solid gold couldn't pull off — Christine's pieces often have delicate, intricate attachments and fine detailing that would be either far too heavy or far too fragile in solid gold. Sterling silver as the base keeps the earrings light enough to wear comfortably and sturdy enough that the delicate elements don't snap.
Because the gold is electroplated onto the metal rather than just sitting on the surface, it genuinely doesn't chip. The one thing that can happen over time is the silver underneath reacting with air, which can make the gold look slightly dull or "dirty" — that's not the gold failing, it's the silver base doing what silver does. A proper jewelry silver cleaner fixes that in seconds.
Gold filled has a genuinely thick layer of gold mechanically bonded to a base metal under heat and pressure — far more gold than plating or vermeil, and far more durable as a result. Still not solid gold, but a meaningfully different category.
PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) bonds a gold layer onto metal using a vacuum process. It's tougher and more scratch resistant than traditional plating, but it tells you nothing about what's underneath that coating — which is exactly the mystery metal problem from earlier.
None of these are appropriate for fresh or healing piercings, for the same core reason: there's a layer between you and the metal, and even the best of them — like vermeil — sits on a different base metal underneath. For healed piercings or jewelry worn outside the channel, vermeil and gold fill are genuinely nice mid-range options, which is exactly why we carry Christine Bekaert's vermeil designer pieces. Just know what you're buying, and know it's a different category from the solid gold and implant grade titanium we use for anything going into a fresh piercing.
