How to Care for Crystals: What Can Get Wet, What Fades, and What the Internet Gets Wrong

Most of the crystal care advice online is either vague or actively harmful.

"Cleanse everything in salt water under the full moon" is the one I see most often, and following it will destroy several of the stones sitting on your shelf right now. Selenite dissolves. Pyrite corrodes. Malachite loses its polish. Amethyst left in the sun fades to a washed-out grey that never comes back.

I have been handling stones since 1998, and I have watched customers ruin beautiful pieces by following instructions written by someone who had never held the material. So here is what actually works, material by material.

💧 Water: the short version

Some stones are fine in water. Many are not. The general rule people repeat is that anything above 6 on the Mohs hardness scale is safe, and that is roughly true but it misses the stones that are chemically reactive rather than soft.

A few notes on the harder cases.

Selenite is gypsum. It sits at 2 on the Mohs scale, you can scratch it with a fingernail, and it genuinely dissolves in water. A selenite plate left on a damp surface will go cloudy and pitted. Dust it with a dry cloth and nothing else, ever.

Pyrite oxidizes. Moisture accelerates it, and once it starts you get a white or rusty powder on the surface that will keep spreading. Collectors call it pyrite disease. Keep it dry and keep it out of humid rooms, which unfortunately includes most bathrooms.

Malachite is a copper carbonate. Water dulls the polish and prolonged contact damages the surface. Wipe it dry only. Polished pieces are perfectly safe to handle, but do not sand or grind it at home.

Turquoise is porous. It absorbs water, oils, lotions, and perfume, and it can shift color permanently. This is why so much turquoise on the market is stabilized with resin, which is a legitimate treatment and should be disclosed.

Hematite has iron in it and can rust at the surface. A quick wipe is fine. Soaking is not.

☀️ Sunlight: the mistake almost everyone makes

"Charging in the sun" is probably the single most common piece of bad advice in this space.

Sunlight permanently fades a long list of stones, and it is not reversible. Once the color is gone, it is gone.

Fades in sunlight: amethyst, citrine, rose quartz, fluorite, celestite, kunzite, aquamarine, topaz, apatite, and most opal, which can also craze and crack as it dries.

Amethyst is the painful one, because it is also the stone people most want to display on a bright windowsill. A deep purple amethyst cluster left in a south-facing window will visibly lighten within a few months.

Sun tolerant: obsidian, jasper, agate, tiger eye, hematite, and clear quartz, though even clear quartz does not need it.

If you like to charge or cleanse your pieces, moonlight does everything sunlight does with none of the damage. So does sound, so does smoke, and so does simply holding the piece with intention. None of those will cost you the color you paid for.

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🧂 Salt: skip it

Salt gets recommended constantly and it deserves its own warning.

Dry salt is abrasive and scratches softer stones. Salt water is worse, because it works into fractures and cleavage planes and crystallizes there as it dries, which slowly wedges the stone apart. On porous material it soaks in and never fully leaves. On anything with metal, including wire wrapping and silver settings, it accelerates corrosion.

There is no stone that requires salt. There are plenty it will damage. It is an easy habit to drop.

🧼 How to actually clean a piece

For most stones, this is all you need:

1. Dust with a soft dry cloth. Microfibre works well.
2. For carvings with recesses, eye sockets, and detail work, use a clean dry makeup brush or a soft toothbrush. This is the single most useful tool for carved pieces and almost nobody mentions it.
3. If a water-safe stone needs more, use lukewarm water and a drop of mild soap, then dry it immediately and completely.

Things to avoid entirely: ultrasonic cleaners, steam cleaners, household chemicals, alcohol, and hot water. Sudden temperature changes crack quartz, and ultrasonic cleaners will shake apart anything with an existing fracture, which includes a large share of natural material.

📦 Storage, and why a bowl full of crystals is a bad idea

This one surprises people.

Quartz sits at 7 on the Mohs scale. Fluorite is 4, calcite is 3, selenite is 2. If you keep them together in a bowl, the quartz scratches everything else every single time you move them around. Those fine surface scratches are what make an older collection look dull, and they are entirely preventable.

Keep softer pieces separated, ideally in individual soft pouches. It takes ten minutes to sort a collection and it protects it permanently.

A few more practical points:

Points and terminations are the fragile part. A quartz point that gets knocked chips at the tip, and a chipped termination reduces value significantly. Store points where they cannot roll into each other.

Spheres roll. Always use a ring or a stand. A sphere that rolls off a shelf onto a hard floor usually does not survive.

Obsidian chips. It fractures conchoidally, which means it breaks in sharp curved flakes rather than crumbling. Keep it away from the edge of shelves and away from harder stones.

Humidity matters both directions. Pyrite degrades in damp air. Opal can craze in air that is too dry. Neither belongs in a bathroom.

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💍 Jewelry needs different care than specimens

A stone you wear takes far more abuse than one on a shelf. Skin oils, lotion, perfume, hairspray, sweat, and constant small impacts all add up.

The general rule is simple: jewelry goes on last and comes off first. After makeup, perfume, and hairspray. Before showering, swimming, cleaning, and sleeping.

Pearls need their own paragraph, since they are where this shop began.

Pearl nacre is soft, roughly 2.5 to 4 on the Mohs scale, and it is chemically vulnerable in a way that stone is not. Perfume, hairspray, and even the acidity of skin will dull the surface over time. Wipe pearls with a soft damp cloth after each wearing and let them dry fully before putting them away.

Never put pearls in an ultrasonic cleaner. Never store them in a sealed plastic bag, because unlike stone they need some ambient moisture and will dry out and craze without it. A soft cloth pouch is right.

If your pearls are strung on silk, expect to restring them every couple of years with regular wear. Silk stretches and eventually frays, and knots between pearls exist so that a broken strand loses one pearl instead of all of them.

Silver findings tarnish. That is normal oxidation, not a defect. An anti-tarnish strip in the storage box slows it down considerably.

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Questions I get asked

Can I put my crystals in the bath with me? Some of them, but I would not. Bath products, oils, and soap residue build up on the surface, and the ones people most want in the bath, like selenite and amethyst, are exactly the ones that suffer.

My amethyst looks lighter than when I bought it. Can I fix it? No, and I wish I had a better answer. Sun fading is permanent. Move any remaining amethyst away from the window now.

Is it bad if my pyrite is turning white? That is oxidation starting. Move it somewhere dry, keep it away from other pieces, and handle it with clean dry hands. It cannot be reversed but it can be slowed.

How often should I clean my pieces? Dust whenever you notice it. Deep cleaning is rarely necessary for display pieces. Worn jewelry benefits from a wipe after each use.

Does cleaning remove the energy of a stone? Physical cleaning and energetic cleansing are two different things and neither interferes with the other. Dust is just dust.

🌿 One last thought

Most of what I have written here comes down to one idea. These pieces came out of the ground over millions of years, and they arrived in your hands already finished. They do not need much from you.

Keep them dry unless you know they are safe. Keep them out of direct sun. Keep the soft ones away from the hard ones. That is genuinely most of it.

Do that, and the piece you buy this year will look exactly the same in twenty years, which is rather the point of buying something well made.

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✨ Suzanne, A Grain of Sand Your trusted source for crystals, beads, and beautiful finds since 1998