Diamond earrings are in a class of their own. If you've never thought about why, it's time you did.
Most people assume jewelry just collects dirt and oil the way any accessory would. Earrings are different. What's building up on your earrings isn't just surface grime. It's earwax, hair product, hairspray residue, lotion, and yes, body fluid. The piercing your earring sits in never fully stops producing fluid, even long after it's healed. Every time you put earrings in and take them out, you're slightly re-stretching that piercing. That process is exactly what creates the smell people associate with old earrings. It's old body fluid mixed with dirt and product buildup, sitting on the post, the back, and the setting itself.
Here's the part almost everyone skips: cleaning the front of the diamond isn't enough. You have to flip the earring around and clean the pavilion, the pointed bottom half of the diamond underneath the setting that you never normally see, along with the entire setting surrounding it. That's where the worst buildup lives, hidden from view and ignored indefinitely.
In my experience as a GIA Graduate Gemologist who cleans jewelry professionally, earrings are consistently the filthiest pieces I work on. I've seen diamonds so caked in buildup they look black. Not sparkling, not dull, actually black. Then they're cleaned, and suddenly they look brand new again. It's one of the most dramatic before-and-afters in this business.
This is also exactly why I steer people toward larger stones over tiny micro pavé settings. Micro pavé diamonds might look delicate, but that delicacy comes at a cost: more crevices, more hiding spots for buildup, and pieces you'll genuinely struggle to ever get fully clean no matter how hard you try.
So what's the actual routine? For light touch-ups, like if you just brushed a finger across the stone, an express spray cleaner on a microfiber cloth handles it. But for real buildup, you need a proper soak. And if a setting is truly caked in, a dedicated deep-soak treatment gets into the crevices a wipe-down never will.
Watch the full cleaning process in the video below, then take your earrings out and actually clean them. Otherwise, you might as well have bought cubic zirconia.
