Gold vermeil is sterling silver with a thick layer of gold over it, and it is the best value in fine-adjacent jewellery. To be sold as vermeil it needs a real silver base and a coating of a specified thickness, which is why it outlasts ordinary gold plating by years rather than months. Plating over brass is the cheapest version and wears through fastest; gold filled sits in between; solid 14k or 18k never wears off because there is no coating to lose. Below, the vermeil and plated pieces, the solid gold worth saving for, and the sterling silver I wear most. Worth knowing what the terms actually require. Vermeil has a legal definition in the United States: sterling silver underneath and gold of at least ten carats plated to a specified thickness. Gold plated has no such requirement, which is why the same word covers a coating that lasts five years and one that lasts five months.

Vermeil and plated pieces are where to buy volume: the stacking rings, the hoops you wear daily, the chains you layer. Treat them as things with a lifespan and they are excellent value. Buy vermeil for the pieces that get handled and replaced, and treat the coating as a wearing part. On a necklace, which barely touches anything, a good vermeil will look new for years; on a ring worn daily it will go through at the back within one, and that is not a defect. The base being silver rather than brass is what matters most, because when the coating does wear you get silver showing rather than green.

Solid gold is the only category where the metal goes all the way through, which is why these are the pieces to buy once. Fourteen carat is harder and better for everyday; eighteen is warmer in colour and softer. Fourteen carat is the sensible everyday choice: harder than eighteen, less likely to bend or scratch, and still unmistakably gold. Eighteen is warmer and richer and softer, which suits earrings and pendants more than rings. Both can be repaired, resized and polished indefinitely, which is the real argument for solid metal over any coating.

Sterling silver deserves more credit than it gets. It tarnishes rather than wearing away, which means it can always be brought back, and a polish cloth undoes months of neglect in a minute. Silver is the most undervalued thing in jewellery. It tarnishes because it reacts with sulphur in the air, and that reaction is entirely reversible with a cloth, so a piece left in a drawer for two years comes back in a minute. Sterling is nine hundred and twenty five parts silver, and anything sold as silver plated is a different and much shorter proposition.

GLDN sits squarely in the vermeil and gold fill space and is unusually clear about which is which, down to the chain weight. That transparency is the reason I send people there when they are trying to learn the difference. The clarity is the reason to shop here: each piece states whether it is vermeil, gold fill or solid, and the chain weight is listed rather than implied. That makes it the easiest place to buy the same style in two metals and see for yourself what the difference is worth.

A few more chains and pendants to build on, in solid metals. Chains and pendants in solid metals to finish, which are the pieces worth buying once. A chain is the item where weight is everything, and a slightly heavier gauge is the difference between something that lasts a decade and something that kinks in a year.

The practical rule I have landed on: buy solid gold for anything that never comes off, and vermeil for everything else. Skin contact, water and friction are what wear a coating through, so a vermeil ring on your dominant hand will go before a vermeil necklace ever will. Perfume and hand cream do more damage than showering, so put jewellery on last and take it off first, and it will look new for far longer than the price suggests.