Cloudy is normal, and the cloud is where the colour comes from. Microscopic fibres inside the quartz scatter the light and colour it at once, so real rose quartz is milky rather than clear. The colour runs from pale pink towards lilac, and a bright, glassy, even pink is the one to question. Rose quartz sits at 7 on the hardness scale, hard enough to scratch glass.
Popular advice tells you to heat a needle and press it into the stone. Others say to hold a lighter to it and see whether it melts.
Do not do either. Sudden heat can crack a stone that is packed with tiny fibres, and rose quartz is packed with them. Both tests only catch plastic anyway.
There is a better check, and it is already in the stone. The cloud that makes rose quartz look milky is the same thing that makes it pink, so you cannot have one without the other.
I cut and set rose quartz by hand in my Tbilisi studio, and that is where this guide starts.
The Cloud Is the Colour
Rose quartz is the pink member of the quartz family. What makes it pink is not something dissolved in it. It is fibres, millions of them, far too small to see one at a time.
The International Gem Society names them: these stones "receive their coloring from fibrous inclusions of a mineral similar to dumortierite".
Those fibres do two jobs at once. They give the stone its pink, and they get in the way of the light passing through, which is what makes it milky. You cannot remove one and keep the other. They are the same fibres.
Pale pink to lilac, and both are real
Rose quartz is rarely a strong colour. Most of it is pale, and a good deal of it leans away from pink towards lilac. That surprises people who expected a postcard pink.
That range is normal. A stone that is strong, even and bright pink all over is worth a second look. That is what dye and glass do well, and what quartz does rarely.
A dome, not facets
Facets work by sending light into a stone and bouncing it back out. Light has to travel into the stone for that to work.
In rose quartz the fibres stop most of the light. So the stone gets a domed shape and a polished face. You are looking at the surface and a little way beneath it, nothing deeper. Very clear material can be faceted, but it is rare and it does not look like this.
No two cloud alike
The fibres never lie the same way twice, so the cloud sits differently in every stone. That is why no two pieces match.
Glass, Dye and Plastic, One Check Each
Each of these rules out one thing, and none of them touches the stone with heat.
Scratch a piece of glass. Quartz is 7 and window glass is about 5.5, so rose quartz will mark glass and glass will not mark it. Use a spare bottle or jar, not a window, and hold the stone by the setting. This is the one that rules out glass.
Hold it up to a lamp. Rose quartz glows from inside, and the cloud drifts as you turn it. Glass shows round bubbles instead. Dyed quartz shows the colour sitting in the cracks rather than through the whole stone.
Close your hand around it. Quartz feels cold when you pick it up and stays cool for a while. Plastic and resin warm to your hand almost at once, and they feel light for their size.
Amethyst is the same mineral with a different colour, and these three checks work on it too. I set them out in how to tell if amethyst is real.
Skip the Lighter and the Needle
Both tests are built on one idea: plastic melts and stone does not. That part is true. The problem is what they cost you to find out.
A flame does not stay on the surface. Quartz can crack when it is heated fast, and a stone packed with fibres has more places to start a crack. On a finished piece the flame also reaches the silver, and oxidised silver does not come back the way it was.
A hot needle does the same thing on a smaller scale, and it leaves a mark whether the stone is real or not.
Both tests only tell you the piece is not plastic. The scratch test tells you that and rules out glass as well, without heat and without leaving a mark.
One more thing to ignore. A popular guide says real rose quartz is amorphous.
Amorphous means no crystal structure, which is what glass is. Quartz is crystalline. Follow that sentence and you would keep the glass and put the quartz down.
Rose Quartz Is Not Pink Quartz
There is a second pink quartz, and it is rarer. It grows as proper crystals with flat faces and points, and it is clear rather than milky. The trade calls it pink quartz.
Rose quartz never does that. The International Gem Society draws the line: pink quartzes grow "in euhedral or regular, distinct crystal shapes with well-formed faces, whereas rose quartzes occur in anhedral or irregular, intergrown crystal shapes". Anhedral means it forms no crystal faces of its own. It comes out of the ground as a solid mass and gets its shape from the cutter. If someone shows you a clear pink crystal with points on it, that is pink quartz, not rose quartz.
The two also get their colour from different things, and that decides which one lasts. Pink quartz takes its colour from changes in the crystal structure, and it is sensitive to light. Leave it in the sun and the pink goes.
Rose quartz does not do that. IGS puts it in one line: pink quartz can "lose their color rapidly" under ultraviolet light, while "the more common rose quartzes don't have this sensitivity". The cloudy stone is the one that keeps its colour.
Silver Beads by Choice
On my other stones the setting is decided for me. A broken surface has to be held from the edge, because a smooth collar of silver has nothing even to close against. That is the case with black tourmaline.
Rose quartz is different. A polished dome has an even edge the whole way round, so a bezel would hold it perfectly well.
I use a crown of silver beads instead. They ring the stone and grip it from the edge, and where a piece needs more, a claw reaches in over the rim. Either way the silver touches the stone at points rather than all the way round.
Quartz is hard enough to wear every day, which is why the whole family ends up in jewellery. So the crown is a choice, not a repair. A ring of small beads catches light in a way a flat collar cannot.
The pieces are in my rose quartz collection.
Common Questions About Rose Quartz
Can rose quartz go in water?
Yes. It is quartz, and water does nothing to it. Wash it in warm water with a little soap, dry it, and keep it away from ultrasonic cleaners.
Does it need special cleaning?
A soft cloth does most of the work, because there is nowhere on a smooth dome for dust to gather. When it needs more, warm soapy water will do it, and dry the silver before you put the piece away.
Does rose quartz fade in the sun?
No. The fading you may have read about belongs to pink quartz, the rare clear kind that takes its colour a different way. Rose quartz keeps its colour.
Why does mine look lilac rather than pink?
Because pale and lilac are both inside the normal range for this stone. Rose quartz also shifts with the light it is under, so a stone that reads pink by a window can read lilac under a lamp.
Why does it not sparkle?
Because the light does not get far into it. The fibres stop it near the surface, so you get one soft highlight off the dome instead of the flashes a faceted stone gives.
Why is it called the stone of love?
That name is much repeated and hard to trace. Rose quartz has been carved and worn since antiquity, which is long enough for any number of meanings to attach to it. I cut stone, so I will leave what it does to you.
