The Different Types of Gold: Colour, Carat and Construction Explained

"Types of gold" has three different answers, and which one you want depends on what you're actually trying to decide. It can mean the colour, the purity, or how the gold is attached to the thing you're buying. Three colours, five carat grades, four constructions.

Most guides pick one of those three and never mention the other two, which is why this question feels harder to answer than it should be. Below we'll take all three in order, then say plainly how many types there are depending on what you meant.

Jump to:

• The Three Ways to Answer This
• Types of Gold by Colour
• Types of Gold by Carat
• What a British Hallmark Actually Certifies
• Types of Gold by Construction
• So How Many Types of Gold Are There?
• How to Tell What You've Actually Got
• Which One Should You Actually Buy?
• What We Make
• FAQs

The Three Ways to Answer This

All gold starts as the same element. Every difference between one piece and another comes from one of three decisions somebody made.

What it's mixed with decides the colour. Pure gold is yellow, and every other colour is an alloy doing something to it.

How much of it is gold decides the carat. This is the number stamped on the clasp, and it's the one that moves the price.

Whether it's gold all the way through decides the construction. This is the one people skip, and it's the one that decides whether a piece lasts a decade or a season.

A 9ct yellow gold plated chain and an 18ct rose gold solid chain differ on all three axes at once. Knowing which axis someone is talking about is most of what it takes to read a listing properly.

Types of Gold by Colour

Three in common use, and they are the same gold with different company.

Yellow gold

Gold alloyed with copper and silver, in roughly equal measure. This is the one that looks like what gold is, because it's closest to the metal in its pure state. It's also the most forgiving on warm and deep skin tones, and the oldest continuous tradition in men's jewellery.

White gold

Gold alloyed with pale metals, usually palladium, nickel or silver, then almost always finished in rhodium to give it the bright white surface people expect. That rhodium finish is the part worth knowing about: it's a coating, it wears, and underneath it white gold is faintly warm rather than truly white. A jeweller can re-plate it, and periodically they will need to.

Rose gold

Gold with a higher proportion of copper than yellow gold carries. More copper means redder, which is why rose, pink and red gold are the same idea at different strengths. It contains exactly as much gold as yellow gold at the same carat, which surprises people who assume it's a cheaper option.

The rarer ones

Green gold is a gold and silver alloy, and it occurs naturally as electrum. Purple and black gold exist but are intermetallic compounds or surface treatments rather than workable alloys, which is why you almost never see them outside novelty pieces. If a listing offers black gold at an ordinary price, it's a coating.

One thing that holds across all of them: colour tells you nothing about quality. A 9ct yellow and a 22ct yellow are both yellow. If you're weighing the two most commonly confused, rose gold against white gold goes into the comparison properly.

Types of Gold by Carat

Carat measures how much of the alloy is actually gold, in twenty-fourths. 24 parts out of 24 is pure; 18 out of 24 is 75%. Alongside it you'll see a millesimal number, which is the same thing in parts per thousand, and that's the figure a British hallmark uses.

A spelling note, since it causes confusion in both directions: Britain uses carat for gold purity and for gemstone weight. The United States splits them, using karat with a K for purity and carat with a C for stones. So 18ct on a British listing and 18K on an American one are the same thing.

Note what isn't in that table. There is no 10 carat row, because 417 is not a recognised British fineness. 10K is the workhorse grade in the United States and it simply has no standing here: an assay office cannot hallmark it. A 10K piece is genuinely gold, it just falls between two British standards.

The recognised UK finenesses for gold are 375, 585, 750, 916, 990 and 999. Anything below 375 cannot be hallmarked as gold or legally described as gold in Britain, which makes 9ct the floor rather than a borderline case.

Our guide to the symbols stamped on jewellery covers how to read the rest of the marks you'll find next to it.

What a British Hallmark Actually Certifies

This is the part that has no American equivalent, and it's the strongest tool you have.

Under the Hallmarking Act, any gold article weighing over 1 gram must be independently tested and hallmarked before it can be sold as gold in the UK. Not marked by the maker. Tested by an assay office that has no stake in the sale. The thresholds for the other metals are 7.78 grams for silver, 1 gram for palladium and half a gram for platinum.

A full hallmark carries three compulsory marks:

• The sponsor's mark. At least two letters in a surround, identifying who submitted the piece. This is the accountability part.
• The fineness mark. The millesimal number, so 750 for 18ct, inside a shaped surround that indicates the metal.
• The assay office mark. Which of the four offices tested it. London's is the leopard's head, and the others are Birmingham, Sheffield and Edinburgh.

What that gives you is rare. In most of the world a purity stamp is the manufacturer's own claim about its own product. A British hallmark is a third party's verdict, and applying one falsely is a criminal offence rather than a trading standards matter.

Two limits worth knowing. A hallmark certifies the metal the article is made of, not a coating on it, so no amount of gold plating can ever earn one. And pieces under the weight threshold are exempt, so a fine chain or a small stud may be perfectly genuine and carry no hallmark at all. Absence of a mark on a light piece proves nothing either way.

Types of Gold by Construction

This is the axis most guides leave out, and it's the one that decides whether you're happy in five years.

Two chains can both say 18ct and be nothing alike, because one is 18ct throughout and the other is 18ct for the first fraction of a micron. The carat describes the gold. It says nothing about how much of it there is.

Read the right-hand column again. Everything below the first row is uncertified, and that is the real asymmetry. British law is strict about solid gold and silent about coatings, so the hallmarking system that protects you so well on a solid piece offers nothing at all on a plated one.

The numbers people quote for plating, 2.5 microns for vermeil and 0.175 microns as a plating floor, come from American FTC rules rather than British law. Reputable makers work to them because they are the only widely agreed benchmarks that exist, but nobody here is legally held to them. We've gone through what that means in what gold plated actually means.

So the two questions that settle it: how thick, and what's underneath. Gold over stainless steel behaves completely differently from the same gold over brass, because steel doesn't corrode and brass does. 18K gold and gold vermeil covers the precious-base route, and how long gold plating lasts covers what to expect from a well-made plated piece.

So How Many Types of Gold Are There?

A direct answer, since it's the thing people actually type.

Three, if you mean colours: yellow, white and rose. This is what almost everybody means when they say three.

Five, if you mean carat grades in ordinary British use: 9ct, 14ct, 18ct, 22ct and 24ct. Six if you include 10ct, which you'll meet on American pieces but cannot be hallmarked here.

Four, if you mean constructions: solid, vermeil, gold filled and gold plated. Five if you count gold tone, which contains no gold and arguably shouldn't be on the list at all.

Multiply them out and you get a few dozen combinations that genuinely exist and behave differently. Which is why the question has no single number attached to it, and why anybody who gives you one without asking what you meant hasn't understood it.

How to Tell What You've Actually Got

If you already own the piece and the listing is long gone, four checks get you most of the way.

Read the hallmark first. A fineness number in a surround with a sponsor's mark and an assay office mark beside it means solid gold, independently tested. A carat number sitting next to letters changes the meaning entirely: GP is gold plated, GEP is gold electroplate, HGE is heavy gold electroplate, and GF is gold filled. So 18ct and 18ct GP are not variations of the same thing, they're opposite ends of the range.

Then pick it up. Gold is dense, noticeably more so than brass or steel, and solid gold has a heft that surprises people the first time. A chain that looks substantial and weighs almost nothing is telling you what's underneath the finish.

Then try a magnet. Gold isn't magnetic, and neither is sterling silver. A piece that pulls toward a magnet has a meaningful amount of ferromagnetic metal in it somewhere, which on a gold-coloured piece usually means a steel or nickel-bearing core under the plating. It won't tell you a piece is solid gold, but it will tell you when one isn't.

Then look at the wear points. Clasps, edges, the underside of a ring, anywhere that takes constant contact. On solid gold those areas polish and stay the same colour. On a plated piece they eventually go pale or pink as the base metal comes through, and that's the most reliable tell there is, because it's the one thing a finish can't fake over time.

Remember the weight exemption before you conclude anything from a missing mark. A gold piece under 1 gram never needed one.

Which One Should You Actually Buy?

Take the three axes in reverse order, because that's the order they matter in.

Construction first. It's the biggest decision by a distance and the one that decides how the piece ages. Solid gold if you want the metal to hold its value. Gold over a stainless steel core if you want the look at a price you'd actually pay, and you want it to last. Gold over brass if you want it for a season and you know that's what you're buying.

Carat second. If you're buying solid, 18ct is the sensible default and 9ct is the hard-wearing, affordable one. If you're buying plated, the carat describes a layer, so it matters far less than the thickness does.

Colour last. It's the decision people agonise over and the one that changes least. Pick the one you keep looking at. Our guide to silver or gold goes into why skin tone decides far less than everybody claims.

Two other things worth knowing before you spend. Plated and solid gold look identical across a room, so most of what reads as expensive is weight and setting rather than metal. And if you want to understand what gold is actually worth by mass, how much a gold bar is worth works it out from scratch.

What We Make

Worth stating plainly, since this whole page is about how much the description leaves out.

Our gold pieces are real 18 carat gold over a solid 316L stainless steel core, with a layer of rhodium between the two rather than the nickel much of the industry uses as a barrier. Steel doesn't rust, corrode or tarnish, so there's no reactive metal waiting underneath, and no copper to mark skin if the finish ever thins.

We also make gold vermeil, which is 18 carat gold over solid sterling silver, for anyone who wants a precious metal underneath rather than steel.

Neither is solid gold and we don't describe them as such. Neither carries a hallmark, because coatings can't. Both give you a real answer to the two questions this page says to ask, which is more than the word gold does on its own. The full range sits in men's gold jewellery, and types of men's chains covers which style to put it on.

FAQs

How many types of gold are there?

It depends which question you're asking. Three colours are in common use: yellow, white and rose. Five carat grades cover almost everything sold in Britain: 9ct, 14ct, 18ct, 22ct and 24ct. And four constructions: solid, vermeil, gold filled and gold plated. So the honest answer is three, five or four, and most arguments about it are two people answering different questions.

What are the 3 types of gold?

If someone says three, they almost always mean the colours: yellow, white and rose. All three start as the same gold and differ only in what's alloyed with it. Yellow uses copper and silver, white uses pale metals like palladium, and rose uses more copper than yellow does.

What is the best type of gold?

18ct in a colour you like, if you're buying solid. It's rich enough to read as gold and alloyed enough to survive being worn. 14ct is harder and paler, 22ct and 24ct are too soft for most jewellery, and 9ct is durable and affordable but the colour is noticeably lighter.

Is 9ct gold real gold?

Yes, and in Britain it is the most common grade sold. 9ct is 37.5% gold, which is 375 parts per thousand, and that is the lowest fineness the UK recognises. Anything below it cannot be hallmarked or legally described as gold here. So 9ct is not a borderline case: it is the floor, and it sits inside the law rather than at the edge of it.

Why is there no 10 carat gold in the UK?

Because 417 is not a recognised British fineness. The UK standards for gold are 375, 585, 750, 916, 990 and 999, so a 10 carat piece cannot be hallmarked here even though it is perfectly legal in the United States, where 10K is common. If you have a 10K piece it is genuinely gold, it simply sits between two British standards and no assay office can mark it.

What's the difference between white gold and silver?

They're different metals that happen to look similar. White gold is gold alloyed with pale metals and usually finished in rhodium. Silver is its own element, sold as sterling at 92.5% purity. White gold costs considerably more and doesn't tarnish the way sterling does.

Is rose gold real gold?

Yes. Rose gold is the same gold with a higher proportion of copper in the alloy, which is where the colour comes from. An 18ct rose gold piece contains exactly as much gold as an 18ct yellow gold one.

Does the type of gold change how much it's worth?

Carat does, directly and proportionally. An 18ct piece holds roughly twice the gold of a 9ct piece of the same weight. Colour doesn't, since rose and yellow at the same carat contain the same gold. And construction matters most of all, because a plated piece contains a fraction of a gram whatever carat the surface says.

Where to Go From Here

Colour, carat, construction. Settle which one you're actually asking about and the answer stops being complicated, and the one that decides most is the one nobody leads with.

Have a look through the gold range if you're deciding what to buy, what gold plated means if you want the construction question in full, or cleaning gold jewellery if you already own some.