Gold Beads

Gold is precious metal, that is used in making jewellery and its various components like chains, pendants, and beads. The gold is yellow(golden) in color. Its purity and the color varies from place to place. The gold bead are small round golden objects that are often pierced for stringing so that it can be worn as jewellery.

Types of Gold Beads

The following types of gold beads are popular for making precious metal gold bead jewelry.

Solid Gold Beads

When the precious metal bead is made of pure gold and is solid in structure, it is called solid gold beads. From 10K, 14K, 18K to 22K gold beads, all are available as solid beads.

Gold Plated Beads

These metal beads are made of some base metal and are covered with a gold electroplated finish. Gold plated beads have a thin molecule of gold or something that really is not karat-gold but which leaves a gold color. Finish colors and thicknesses may vary and therefore, it is not essential that gold plated beads are in standard gold color. Also, it is not necessary that the base metal be a precious metal. It can be semi precious metal beads or other metal beads with gold plating.

Gold Filled Beads

Gold filled beads have a layer of real gold over copper, brass or other metal. As compared to gold plated beads, gold filled beads wear off very slowly.

Rose Gold Beads

Rose gold is an alloy of copper and gold which gives the gold metal a pink tint. Rose gold beads are used for making elaborate jewelry pieces like pendants and charms, and also for ethnic jewelry.

Gold Vermeil Beads

They are in fact karat gold plated beads with sterling silver as the base metal. The finish of these precious metal beads is called vermeil or vermeille. As vermeil is electro-plated and not fused like gold-filled, the plating will eventually wear off. However, it takes longer to wear off than costume gold-plate because the plating on vermeil is considerably thicker than that on costume jewelry.

Gold Foil Beads

Gold foil beads are in fact not precious metal beads but need a mention as they are many a times confused with types of gold beads. Gold foil beads have a gold foil core encased in transparent colors of glass. The glasses used could be Venetian, Murano or Indian featuring a vast array of attractive designs and colors.

Gold Spacer Beads

Gold spacer beads are small beads ranging from size 1.6mm to 9.5mm and are used to cover the empty spaces between such jewelry pieces as gold bead necklace etc. Many pendants require spacer beads if more than one pendant is to be worn on a chain. Some require one bead between each pendant, others require multiple beads so that the pendants would not overlap.

Gold Rosary Beads

Rosary beads are used for religious purposes. People sometimes like to use gold rosary beads so that they last for a long time and be handed down for generations. Rosary beads are also a very popular item for catholic gifts.

For information about other precious metal beads, refer to Precious metal Beads

Uses of Gold Beads

Gold beads are mostly used in making jwellery pieces like necklace, mangalsutra, bangles, bracelets, ear rings, nose rings and so on. Gold rosary beads are used for religious purposes.