Types of Metal Platings and How to Tell the Difference

Types of Metal Platings

What is Metal Plating?

Custom metal products like keychains and coins are not made entirely of gold or silver. As much as we would love to offer solid gold coins, they are extremely expensive to produce! Products like stainless steel and sterling silver are much more expensive in bulk than those with a metal base like zinc alloy or iron. So, instead of breaking your budget, we mold that metal base to your custom design and finish it with plating, another thin layer of metal overtop. Using plating, we give metal projects a fantastic final finish that’s cost effective for your projects.

How does Electroplating work?

Electroplating is the most common way that metal products are finished. We place both the base metal (the Cathode in this process) and the desired plating metal (the Anode in this process). We run electricity through this solution, transferring positively charged particles of the desired metal plating onto the base metal, thus creating a thin layer over the base.

Types of Platings

Gold Plating

Gold plating is one of our most popular plating types, and is made from real gold. We use gold plating for a variety of different items like lapel pins, coins, medals and more. Another less popular style we offer is Rose Gold Plating, which gives the gold plating a pink undertone to the golden color. Gold is a great choice for bringing some class to whatever project you’re planning for. We go further into this on our pin page dedicated to gold plating.

Bronze Plating

Bronze plating is another great option and looks very similar to gold. If you didn’t put the two platings next to each other, it would be hard to tell the difference! We might recommend bronze for enamel-colored pins or coins that will marry better with the tone of bronze plating over gold plating. Some clientele have also chosen Bronze to get an even shinier-looking pin or coin instead of gold and have loved the final look. Don’t forget to consider whether you want an antique or shiny bronze finish.

Silver Plating

Silver plating is a cool-toned metal finish and is one of our most common platings for custom coins. It’s a universally classy choice for making anything, including pins, keychains, and coins!

Nickel Plating

Nickel plating has a slightly warmer tone compared to true silver and is slightly cheaper than silver. It has a reflective, mirror-like surface, which we recommend for lapel pins. We also offer Black Nickel, which is great for designs that want to maintain a black outline for their custom pin or coin.

Copper Plating

Copper plating is the closest color equivalent to what a cartoon series would make a 3rd place racing medal look like. Copper is a solid warm color in the red family, a stark difference between the other plating options. It is one of our top choices if you want a more rustic finish for an antique look simply because of the amazing quality of the worn metal look.

Dual Plating

If you want to make your design pop, we offer an option to dual-plate it! Though dual plating is slightly more expensive than single plating, it makes for a unique custom pin or coin. The most common combination of plating is gold and silver, but we can do combinations of any platings that we offer.

Have Any Questions?

If you’re unsure which plating would work for your design, we can help you decide! You can submit a formal quote request on our website and show us your design; we can help you pick the best plating option.