For jewellery making, gold is an essential material that impresses with its unique appearance and has therefore been popular for thousands of years. White gold is now a generic term for all gold alloys in which an addition of other metals ensures that the original gold is decoloured. This means that the golden yellow precious metal becomes a whitish paler gold base that is easier to work with than pure gold, which is too soft for a solid and durable piece of jewellery. White gold was introduced to cheaply replace platinum in jewellery gold and to maintain the good workability of gold. Palladium, zinc and also the already mentioned platinum form white gold together with pure gold in the alloy. The variation with palladium is a particularly noble version of white gold, which is also relatively soft. The basic colour of white gold with palladium is greyish, while white gold versions with zinc and platinum are lighter. In addition to the well-known materials used to create white gold, new possibilities are constantly being tried out to combine fine gold with other elements in an alloy to create white gold. Cobalt, manganese germanium or chromium are among these, but have mostly not been able to establish themselves.
