Choosing Pearls For Yourself

With over 600 pieces of beautiful pearl jewellery available on our website, choosing pearl jewellery for yourself is no easy task. There are many things to consider when making your pearl jewellery choice, including pearl sizes, pearl colours, necklace length, fittings and design.

At Absolute Pearls, we aim to provide service and products beyond expectation, and we are always available to advise you on choosing pearl jewellery.

At the end of the day, there are no hard and fast rules for wearing pearls, and your choice will ultimately be down to your own personal taste and budget. However, here are a few handy hints and tips to get you started:

• Choosing pearl size – younger women, and women who are more petite in height or build can wear smaller pearls. For most women, pearls of 7-8mm, the standard size for freshwater cultured pearls, are about right. The larger the pearls the more expensive they will be, but the bigger the statement they will make.
• Choosing pearl colour – classic white, ivory and cream pearls will suit most women, with the yellow shades of South Seas pearls suiting darker, olive skin types. For overtones and other colours and shades, a good rule of thumb is that if you have an item of clothing in that colour that suits you, then the pearls will too.
• Choosing pearl necklace length – the most popular pearl necklace length is the princess length at around 18 inches, which sits on the breast bone. This will go with most necklines and styles of outfit. See our pearl necklace guide for full details of the different pearl necklace lengths.
• Altering pearl necklace lengths - Absolute Pearls offers a free alteration service to shorten or lengthen your pearl necklace to suit your exact requirements (pearls for extra length are charged pro-rata). Simply state your requirements in the ‘comments about your order’ box.
• Matching existing jewellery – Absolute Pearls will do our very best to help you to match new items to your existing jewellery. Simply email or call us for advice, including a photograph if possible.
• Buying matching sets – we would strongly recommend that you buy matching items at the same time, and many of our pearl jewellery sets often come with a discount of 2-5% compared to buying each item individually. If you plan to build your set one item at a time, it may be difficult to match the colour of the original pieces at a later date. If we split a set, we will always record this so that we can offer you the other pieces at a later date if they are still available.
• Choosing clasps– at Absolute Pearls, we carefully match the quality of the clasp with the value and weight of the pearl jewellery. For example, a low cost piece of baroque pearl jewellery may only have a silver clasp, while a more expensive jewellery necklace may have a 14ct or 18ct gold clasp. You can, however, request a lower or higher priced clasp with many pieces of pearl jewellery to match your budget.
• Choosing your chain – all Absolute Pearls most pearl pendants come with a 17½ inch necklace chain as standard (chains may occasionally be shorter - check on the product detail page). We do not use the cheap, thin style of chain (0.5g/0.6g/0.7g in weight) often found elsewhere as these can easily break resulting in loss or damage to your pearl pendant. Our chains are typically all over 1.0g in weight,
• Buying without a chain – all Absolute Pearl pendants prices include the chain. If you wish to buy your pearl pendant without the chain, please contact us directly for the reduced price.
• Choosing pearls with diamonds – all our diamond pearl jewellery includes certified conflict-free diamonds, with a G/H or H/I colour and SI or I1 clarity. This makes our pearl jewellery with diamonds affordable, while retaining a good quality stone.