Care & Maintenance
Ask anyone who has hesitated over a resin purchase what worries them most, and the answer is almost always the same: "Won't it go yellow?" It is a reasonable fear, because cheap resin absolutely does yellow, sometimes within a year. But the full truth is more encouraging and more interesting than a simple yes or no. Yellowing is a chemical process with known causes, and once you understand them, you can judge a piece before you buy it and keep a good one looking new for a very long time.
Epoxy resin is a plastic formed when two liquids — a resin and a hardener — react and cure into a solid. That cured solid is not chemically inert forever. Two things slowly attack it: ultraviolet light and heat. UV radiation breaks certain bonds in the polymer, and the by-products of that breakdown are amber-coloured. Heat accelerates the same reaction. Over months and years, those tiny colour shifts accumulate into a visible warm tint, most noticeable in pieces that were originally clear or white.
Yellowing is not dirt and it is not a coating wearing off. It is the material itself changing colour from the inside, which is exactly why quality of resin matters more than any amount of cleaning.
Here is the part that separates a keepsake from a disappointment. There are broadly two grades of epoxy on the market:
Industrial or "table-top" epoxy made for coating floors and countertops. It is cheap, thick and has little or no UV protection. It yellows.
Art-grade epoxy formulated specifically for decorative and jewellery work, with UV stabilisers and often HALS (hindered amine light stabilisers) built into the chemistry. It resists yellowing dramatically better.
A studio that cares about longevity uses the second kind, and the difference over five years is night and day. When you commission a piece, it is completely fair to ask what resin is being used and whether it is UV-stabilised. At our studio, art-grade material is the default for exactly this reason — a piece meant to be an heirloom cannot afford to age badly.
Yellowing worries people equally across every product, but the real risk is very uneven:
Clear and white pieces show yellowing most — a crystal-look resin vase or a white river table reveals even a slight warm shift.
Deep blue, geode and heavily pigmented pieces hide it almost entirely. A sapphire ocean wall clock or a pigment-rich art panel can shift slightly and no one would ever notice, because the colour is already doing the work.
This is one quiet reason the ResinRiva palette leans into deep ocean blues and layered pigments — they are not only beautiful, they are forgiving over time.
Even the best resin lasts longer with a little thought about where it lives. None of this is difficult:
Keep it out of prolonged direct sunlight. A piece on a windowsill in the afternoon sun is getting the maximum UV dose every single day. The same piece on a shaded wall a metre away is barely exposed. Placement is the single biggest lever you control.
Keep it away from sustained heat. Not the odd warm day, but radiators, the top of appliances that run hot, or a spot directly above a stove.
Dust gently and avoid harsh chemicals. Alcohol and acetone cleaners can dull the surface and are never necessary — a soft, slightly damp microfibre cloth is all a resin piece ever needs.
Our full care routine covers cleaning in more detail, but placement is where yellowing is won or lost.
It helps to set honest expectations. A quality piece kept sensibly will look essentially unchanged for years. If a piece is going to shift at all, it happens gradually and evenly, not in patches. Patchy discolouration usually points to a specific cause — a heat source on one side, or sun falling on part of the piece — which is a placement problem you can fix, not a flaw in the resin.
If you have inherited or bought an older piece that has already yellowed, there is unfortunately no way to reverse the colour change inside cured resin — the chemistry has already happened. What you can sometimes do is restore surface gloss, which makes an older piece look markedly better even if the tint remains.
Cheap resin yellows; art-grade, UV-stabilised resin resists it so well that with sensible placement your piece should outlast the trend that inspired it. When you are deciding between makers, the quality of the material is the thing to ask about — it matters far more than price alone. A commission built from good resin and kept out of harsh light is genuinely a keep-forever object, which is the whole point of choosing handcrafted over disposable.
Have a question about a specific piece or where to place it? Message us on WhatsApp and we will give you an honest answer before you order.
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Every piece in the journal began as someone's idea. Tell us yours — colours, keepsakes, occasions — and we'll pour it to order.
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18 March 2026 · 5 min read