Jewelry Hints, Tips and Tricks: Preventing Light Damage To Your Gemstones

Prevent Light Damage To Your Gemstones!

While not all gemstones fade if subjected to the sun's rays there are those that will fade, even from artificial lighting and dyed stones can always fade when exposed to light sources.

Un-dyed gemstones can also fade. This is usually due to less stable atoms than those found in stones that do not fade as readily or even the loss of water from a stone. Irradiated stones will also fade more readily than those that are natural so when selecting gemstones keep this in mind. 

Never leave these gemstones in sunlight or bright artificial lighting:

Amber -can become harder and brittle causing cracking 
Agate-Dyed or stained varieties only-Fades
Apatite-Pink-Fades
Aventurine - Fades
Celestite- Fades
Danubrite- Pink or Yellow-Fades
Fluorite - Fades
Jade-Dyed or stained varieties only-Fades
Lapis Lazuli-Dyed or stained varieties only-Fade
Opal -can become harder and brittle causing cracking
Pearls-Fading & nacre can become brittle and flake on pearls with thinner nacre coatings
Quartz: Amethyst, Ametrine, Citrine, Rose Quartz, Smokey Quartz- Fades
Spodumene- Kunzite, Hiddenite- Fades
Beryl- Aquamarine, Bixbite, Emerald,  Helidor, Morganite - Fades
Sapphires -Yellow & Orange Irradiated Varieties- Fades
Topaz-brown varieties (especially irradiated stones) Can fade to blue 
Tourmaline- Fades,may crack or shatter from extreme heat
Zircon-Can turn brown