What are children's earrings actually made of?

A plain guide to the metals in children's earrings. What karat means, what plating hides, how steel grades differ, and what to check before you buy.

Most children's earrings are made of a base metal you are never told the name of, covered in a thin layer of something that looks more expensive. The layer wears through. What sits underneath is what her skin spends its time against, and it is the part almost no product page describes. This guide names the materials, explains what the labels mean, and sets out what to check before you buy. Our materials page names ours exactly.

Why the material is the whole question

Skin does not react to the color of an earring. It reacts to what the metal releases into it over time.

That release is the mechanism behind almost every problem parents describe. Green staining, itching, redness, a hole that will not settle. Different symptoms, one underlying cause: metal ions moving from an earring into skin, in the warm, damp, slightly acidic conditions of a pierced ear.

The rate of that release depends on what the metal is and how stable it is. Not on the price, not on the brand, and not on the words used to describe it.

Nickel allergy affects around one in five people in North America. The American Academy of Pediatrics reported in 2020 that pediatric nickel allergic contact dermatitis has nearly quadrupled over three decades, with at least 1.1 million children in the United States already sensitized. Girls carry most of that burden, and the research points at pierced ears and jewelry as the main route of exposure. A 2025 systematic review found people with piercings were nearly six times more likely to be nickel allergic.

Sensitization is generally permanent. Once the immune system learns to react to a metal, that reaction stays. The exposure is the part you can control.

Gold, and what karat actually measures

Karat measures purity. It does not measure quality, size or value. It tells you how much of the metal is gold, and how much of it isn't.

There is one idea to hold on to, and the rest follows from it. Picture the metal divided into 24 equal parts. The karat number is simply how many of those parts are gold. Everything left over is other metal.

So 24 karat is all 24 parts gold, with nothing else in it. 18 karat is 18 parts gold and 6 parts other metal. 9 karat is 9 parts gold and 15 parts other metal.

Marked as	Parts that are gold	Parts that are other metal	Is that other metal named?
24K	24 of 24	none	nothing to name
18K	18 of 24	6	almost never
14K	14 of 24	10	almost never
10K	10 of 24	14	almost never
9K	9 of 24	15	almost never

In plain terms: 18 karat is about three quarters gold, 14 karat is a little over half, 10 karat is under half, and 9 karat is about a third.

Now read the last column, because it is the entire problem.

A stamp tells you how much of the metal is gold. It never tells you what the rest is. On an 18 karat earring, 6 parts in every 24 are some other metal, and that other metal is the part her skin has to cope with. Nobody is obliged to name it, and almost nobody does.

What is usually in there is copper, zinc, silver, and nickel. Nickel is the one that matters most, because it is the most common cause of metal allergy by a wide margin, and because it is cheap and useful for hardening gold.

Which of those are present, and in what proportions, is the manufacturer's recipe. Two earrings both stamped 9K can contain quite different recipes and behave quite differently against the same ear. The stamp is identical. The behavior is not.

That is why gold on its own is soft and unreactive, and used in dentistry and electronics for exactly that reason, and yet a gold earring can still cause a reaction. You are rarely reacting to the gold. You are reacting to the part nobody wrote down.

This is why "it's real gold" is not the reassurance it sounds like. Around one in eleven patch-tested patients has reacted to gold itself, and women made up more than nine in ten of those cases. The lower the karat, the more of the earring is something other than gold, and the more room there is for a metal her skin objects to.

The pressure that pushed karat down

The price of gold has risen sharply over the past several years. That raises the cost of manufacturing any piece of gold jewelry, and a brand facing that increase has two choices. It can raise its prices, or it can hold its prices and reduce what goes into the product.

Raising prices costs customers, so the reduction is the more common route. It happens in two places.

The visible one is karat: 18 down to 14, to 12, to 9. That change is usually stamped on the piece, so it is at least disclosed.

The less visible one is the core. A manufacturer moves from a stable steel to a cheaper grade, or to a base metal that never gets named at all. Nothing on the product page changes, because nothing on the product page described the core in the first place.

Plating, filling, vermeil and coating

These four words describe different amounts of gold over something else. They're used loosely, and the differences are worth knowing.

Gold plated means a layer of gold applied over a base metal, usually by electroplating. The layer can be extremely thin, and there's no universal minimum.

Gold filled means a thicker layer, fused under heat and pressure, typically regulated in the United States at a minimum proportion of the total weight. More gold than plating, still a layer over something else.

Vermeil means gold over sterling silver specifically, with a minimum thickness. The base is at least a known quantity.

PVD, physical vapor deposition, is a coating applied as a vapor in a vacuum chamber. It is harder and more scratch-resistant than standard plating, which is why it is marketed as waterproof and hard-wearing. Those claims are broadly accurate.

Every one of these describes the surface. None of them tells you the base metal underneath, and the base metal is what she is exposed to once the surface wears through. Every coating wears through eventually. The only question worth asking is what's revealed when it does.

The economics of coating are worth following, because they run backwards from how they look. Applying a coating costs more than not applying one. It still saves money overall, because of what it permits underneath. Spend a little on the surface, save considerably more on the metal it covers.

A coating also buys time, and that matters more than the cost does. A reaction to a metal is rarely immediate. It builds with exposure and can take months or years to appear, by which point she has worn several pairs. The ones that started it are long out of the picture. Whether or not that is anyone's intention, it is the effect: the pair responsible almost never gets identified, so the pattern repeats.

I have walked plating factories while sourcing. I asked the same question at each: what exactly do you mean by PVD? I received a different answer every time. Different source metals, different thicknesses, different definitions of what counted as PVD at all. If the people applying the coating cannot agree on what it is, the word on the finished product carries no information by the time it reaches you.

Steel, and why the grade is the whole point

"Stainless steel" is a family, not a material. It covers hundreds of different alloys with very different compositions and very different behavior against skin. A product described only as stainless steel hasn't told you anything useful.

The grade is the information. S316L Surgical Steel is a specific austenitic grade with a low carbon content and added molybdenum, which is what gives it its corrosion resistance. It is the grade used in medical instruments and surgical implants, chosen there for the same property that matters in an earring: it resists corrosion, so it releases very little into the tissue around it.

A common and reasonable question is whether it contains nickel. It does. Most stainless steels do, because nickel is what makes the steel austenitic and stable.

The distinction that matters is between nickel being present in an alloy and nickel being released from it. Those are different measurements, and only the second one has any bearing on skin. The metallurgical structure of S316L holds nickel tightly within the alloy. The European standard EN 1811 exists specifically to measure release rather than presence, by simulating prolonged skin contact and measuring what comes out.

That's why "nickel-free" claims are worth treating carefully. A brand that says nickel-free is making a claim about composition, often without testing. A result under EN 1811 is a measurement of what actually leaves the metal.

Sterling silver, titanium and the rest

Sterling silver is marked 925, and that number is the specification. It is 92.5 percent silver. The rest is other metal, most often copper, and the same question applies as it does to gold: that portion is not usually named either. Silver also tarnishes, which is a surface chemical reaction, and it happens against skin as readily as it happens in a drawer. Plenty of parents treat sterling silver as the safe default. The number on the clasp says otherwise.

Titanium is genuinely inert and biocompatible, and implant-grade titanium is a legitimate choice for sensitive skin. It's harder to work into fine settings, it holds stones differently, and grades vary as much as steel grades do. "Titanium" alone carries the same problem as "stainless steel" alone.

Base metals covers everything unnamed: brass, zinc alloys, nickel silver, pot metal. Nickel silver contains no silver at all. These are what sit under most inexpensive plated jewelry, and they are the reason a coating wearing through matters.

The part nobody checks: posts and backs

An earring has three parts that touch an ear. The front, which everyone photographs. The post, which passes through the piercing. And the back, which sits against the lobe for exactly as long as the front does.

Manufacturing cost is concentrated in the visible part. Posts and backs are the components most often sourced separately, most often made of something cheaper, and most often undescribed.

That matters more than it sounds, because the post sits inside the piercing channel. It is in contact with the inner surface of the hole, where skin is thinner, warmer, damper and more permeable than the outside of the lobe.

There is a second reason this matters, and it is about surface area. A stud front is small and only its underside touches skin. The post and the back together often present more contact area than the front does, and they hold it for the entire time the earring is worn. Any measurement of what an earring releases is therefore incomplete if it only looked at the decorative part.

This is why testing scope is worth asking about, not just testing. A result that covers the front of a stud and not the post has measured the part least likely to cause a problem.

When a product page describes the material of an earring, ask whether that description covers the post and the back. In most cases it doesn't, and in most cases the brand can't tell you.

What the standards actually measure

Three names appear on children's jewelry, and they measure different things.

ASTM F2923 is the United States safety specification for children's jewelry. It covers lead, cadmium, nickel, small parts that could be swallowed, sharp points and edges, and the strength of magnets and fasteners. It is the broadest of the three, and it is written specifically for products intended for children aged twelve and under.

CPSIA is federal law rather than a voluntary standard. It sets the legal limits on lead in children's products, currently 100 parts per million in accessible substrate material, and restricts certain phthalates. A CPSIA claim is a statement about compliance with the law.

EN 1811 is European and it measures one thing precisely: how much nickel is released from an item during prolonged skin contact. The test simulates a week of wear in artificial sweat and measures what comes out. It is the only one of the three that measures release rather than presence, which is why a result under EN 1811 is more informative about skin than any composition claim.

Two things are worth knowing about how these get used. A brand can state a standard without having tested to it, because nobody is checking every listing. And a brand can test one item in a range and describe the whole range as tested. Neither is illegal. Both are worth asking about.

The question that separates a real claim from a decorative one is who performed the test and what the result was. A named independent laboratory and a stated result is evidence. A standard number on its own is a reference to a document.

How materials compare for daily wear

Continuous wear is the condition that matters. An earring worn to a party behaves differently from one worn to school, to bed, and through swimming lessons for a year.

Material	What it is	Behavior against skin in daily wear
S316L Surgical Steel	A specific low-carbon austenitic grade with molybdenum	Highly corrosion-resistant. Nickel is present in the alloy but tightly held; release is what EN 1811 measures
Pure 24 karat gold	Gold with no alloy content	Chemically inert and soft. Stability comes from the purity; as a finish, what it covers still matters
18K to 9K gold	Between 6 and 15 parts in every 24 are other metals	Depends entirely on the undisclosed recipe. Lower karat means more of everything that is not gold
Gold plated base metal	A thin layer over an unnamed metal	Fine until the layer wears. Then the base metal is in contact, and it was never described
Sterling silver (925)	About 92 parts silver in every 100, the rest other metal	Tarnishes, which is a surface reaction that also happens against skin. That remaining portion is rarely disclosed
Implant-grade titanium	An inert, biocompatible metal	Very stable. Grades vary, and "titanium" alone is as uninformative as "stainless steel" alone
Unnamed base metal	Brass, zinc alloys, nickel silver, pot metal	Unpredictable by definition. Nickel silver contains no silver

The pattern across the table is consistent. Stability, and knowing exactly what the metal is, predict how an earring behaves. The words used to sell it do not.

What to check before you buy

Six questions. Any brand that can answer all six is telling you something real.

What is the base metal, by name and grade? Not "stainless steel" but which grade. Not "gold" but what karat, over what.
Are the post and the back the same material as the front? If the answer is vague, assume not.
What testing has been done, and to which standard? ASTM F2923 is the United States children's jewelry standard. EN 1811 measures nickel release. CPSIA covers lead and other restricted substances.
Who did the testing? A named independent laboratory means something. Self-certification means the brand tested itself.
What was the result? "Tested" isn't a result. "Nickel release not detected under EN 1811" is a result.
Is there a coating, and what is under it? If there's a coating, the question becomes what she's wearing once it wears through.

A note worth adding: the United States has no legal limit on how much nickel an earring may release. The European Union introduced one in 1994 and tightened it in 2004. Denmark restricted nickel release in 1992, and nickel allergy among Danish children fell from 24.8 percent to 9.2 percent between 1985 and 1998. In the United States, the responsibility sits with the person buying.

What purepixxi uses

Two materials. That's the entire list.

S316L Surgical Steel. The same grade used in medical instruments and implants. On the Polished Surgical Steel range, that is what the whole earring is.

24K Pure Gold. Pure 24 karat gold finished onto a solid S316L Surgical Steel core with Aunix™ 24K, our engineered gold finish.

Aunix™ 24K is a gold-plating process, and we say so. Describing it any other way would be the same evasion this guide is about. The difference isn't the absence of plating. The difference is what we plate and what we plate it onto. All gold plating is only as safe as the metal underneath. Ours is pure 24 karat gold over surgical steel, rather than thin low-karat gold over a base metal nobody will name.

The standard runs all the way down. The setting, the post and the butterfly back all carry the same S316L Surgical Steel core.

It's independently tested. I sent pieces to SGS and chose the ones with the largest surface area touching an ear. They tested the setting, the post and the butterfly back. Eight pairs, all of them. Nickel release was not detected under EN 1811. Tested to ASTM F2923 and CPSIA, with lead below a tenth of the United States legal limit. That is report BTO 341803/1, and you can ask me for it.

The earrings are made by a precision engineering facility that has been operating for more than forty years and supplies ear-piercing systems worldwide, which means the same regulated British standards apply to what comes off those lines. Every pair is laser-scanned to confirm the stones are set correctly, then sealed in its capsule, sterilized, batch-numbered and dated.

I have turned down other suppliers rather than accept a different specification. There's more available on the market in styles and options, and taking it would mean giving up the thing this guide is about.

You can see both ranges: 24K Pure Gold and Polished Surgical Steel.

Questions parents ask next

Is gold or surgical steel better for sensitive ears? Both ranges use the same S316L Surgical Steel core through the setting, post and back, and both passed the same tests. The choice is preference and budget rather than a safety trade-off.

Does more expensive mean safer? No. Price tracks design, brand and gold content. A costly 9 karat piece can release more than an inexpensive well-specified steel one. The specification is what predicts behavior, not the price tag.

What does "hypoallergenic" mean on a jewelry label? It isn't a regulated term in jewelry and it has no legal definition. Any brand can apply it without testing anything.

Can she wear the same earrings every day? That depends on the material rather than the schedule. Continuous wear is exactly the condition that makes stability matter, because release accumulates with contact time.

Her ears have never reacted. Does any of this apply? Sensitization builds through exposure and can appear after years without a problem. No reaction now is not evidence of no reaction later, which is why the material she wears daily through childhood is worth attention before anything goes wrong.

What if her ear looks infected rather than irritated? That's a question for your pediatrician, not for a jewelry guide.

If you want the short answer in the form of a pair, the 4mm Flawless Crystal Stud Earrings in 24K Pure Gold are where most parents start.