One habit matters more than everything else on this page: jewellery goes on last and comes off first.
Perfume, hairspray, lotion and sunscreen all carry solvents and oils that sit on plating and slowly work at it. Get dressed, do your hair, spray your perfume, let it settle, and put your jewellery on at the end. Reverse it at night. It comes off before you wash your face, before you shower, and before you sleep.
That's most of the job done. The rest is detail.
Water gets into places you can't dry
The trouble with water isn't the gold. It's the gap behind a stone, the hollow inside a bangle, the join in a clasp. Water sits in there long after the outside feels dry, and the silver beneath the plating starts to react. Weeks later you notice a grey shadow around a setting and can't think what caused it.
So rings come off for wudu, for washing up, for the shower, for swimming. Chlorine is harsh on plating. Sea water is worse. If you've had a chain on at Hawkesbay, rinse it in fresh water and dry it properly that evening rather than the next morning.
The cloth and the pouch aren't packaging
Every order ships with a soft polishing cloth and an anti-tarnish pouch, and both are doing a job.
Wipe the piece down when you take it off. Five seconds, and it lifts the sweat and skin oils before they've had all night to work. Then put it back in the pouch, which is treated to absorb the sulphur compounds that cause tarnish in the first place. A ring left out on a dressing table dulls faster than the identical ring kept closed in its pouch.
What not to do
Don't use silver dip. Those liquid tarnish removers are made for solid silver and they strip plating in seconds. It's the most common way we see a piece ruined, and it can't be undone at home.
Don't use toothpaste. It's an abrasive. It's also a stubbornly popular internet tip, and it sands the plating off along with the tarnish.
Don't scrub with a brush, for the same reason. If something is lodged in a setting, use warm water and a soft cloth, gently, and then stop.
And don't try to rescue a piece that's properly gone. Send it in. The first polish and replate is free with every piece.
Storing what you don't wear often
Heavier occasion pieces spend most of the year in a drawer, which is fine as long as they're in their pouches and the drawer isn't in a bathroom. Shower humidity will find them.
Don't pile pieces loose in one box either. Stones are far harder than plating, and a ring rattling against a pendant for six months leaves marks a polish won't fully take out.
Knowing when to send it back
There's no schedule for replating, because it depends on how often you wear the piece and on your own skin. The signal is visual. The gold starts reading slightly grey or pinkish at the contact points, usually the underside of a band or the back of a chain. That's the silver showing through, and that's the moment to send it in rather than wait.
Why it happens faster here than in most places, and where it shows up first: does gold plating survive a Karachi summer?