Cleansing your crystals is important if you want to maintain their high vibrational frequencies and benefit from their healing properties. Water cleansing, salt cleansing, sound cleansing, and sunlight cleansing are just some of the ways you can cleanse your crystals.
However, some crystals are sensitive to certain cleansing methods – particularly sunlight cleansing.
Sunlight cleansing your crystals involves placing the crystals under direct sunlight for a certain amount of time, depending on the crystal.
But before you do this, it’s worth knowing which crystals can get damaged when exposed to direct sunlight, as harsh sun can cause the crystals to fade in color and, in some cases, crack or become brittle.
With that said, here are 15 crystals that cannot be exposed to sunlight.
1. Clear Quartz
Clear quartz neutralizes and absorbs negative energies to bring you mental clarity, representative of its clear and transparent appearance. But if exposed to harsh sun, clear quartz can become brittle and start to crack.
In fact, this applies to the whole quartz family of crystals, including smoky quartz, rose quartz, and spirit quartz. For these colored quartz crystals, prolonged exposure to direct sunlight can cause their colors to fade, making them look like clear quartz.
2. Amethyst
Amethyst is a beautiful violet-colored crystal with powerful healing properties that can soothe stress and anxiety, balance mood swings, and temper strong emotions, such as anger. It can also improve intuition and increase spiritual awareness.
These healing properties, as well as amethyst’s attractive color, make it all the more important to avoid exposing it to direct sunlight. The color can fade as amethyst largely gets its color from the presence of iron in the crystal.
3. Opal
Like amethyst, opal is a beautiful, eye-catching crystal. It features mixed colors of sky blue, turquoise, and light pink, making it one of the most unique-looking healing crystals – especially in the light. Opal’s healing properties include emotional stability, passion, courage, happiness, and love.
Just avoid placing opal in direct sunlight, however, as it’s another crystal that can lose its color. Opal will fade when exposed to the sun, making its natural combination of turquoise, blue, and pink colors appear dull and less attractive.
4. Aventurine
Green aventurine is a soft green crystal with healing properties that include increased imagination and creativity, emotional balance, positivity, and clarity of mind. It can also clear mental blocks and guide you toward success and prosperity.
Aventurine is, in fact, a member of the quartz family, so it can also fade and become brittle when exposed to harsh, direct sunlight. This will result in the aventurine adopting a paler, less prominent shade of green with an increased risk of cracking.
5. Calcite
Calcite can become both lighter and more brittle in direct sunlight.
This applies to all varieties of calcite healing crystals, including blue calcite, honey calcite, white calcite, and green calcite.
Some of the healing properties that calcite crystals share include emotional healing and learning, along with the power to cleanse and amplify other energies in your area.
Instead of sunlight cleansing, it’s recommended to recharge the vibrational energies of your calcite crystals in full moonlight. This will restore their healing properties and ensure your calcite crystals don’t crack or lose their attractive colors.
6. Kunzite
Kunzite is a pinkish violet crystal that’s known for awakening the heart chakra and encouraging feelings of trust, positivity, and love for one’s self and others. It can also improve intuition and help you feel lighter, both mentally and emotionally.
This is another crystal that will fade if exposed to direct sunlight, becoming more white than its natural purple color. Similar to calcite, it’s best to recharge its high vibrations of love by placing it under a full moon and leaving it overnight.
7. Celestite
Celestite is a beautiful soft blue crystal with a subtle translucent appearance. It’s known to clear the mind and encourage deep spiritual connections, which can help guide you toward a heightened state of serenity, tranquility, and joy.
Due to its soft, light blue color, celestite will take on a whiter appearance if left exposed in direct sunlight. It can also get brittle and crack. Instead, cleanse your celestite crystals by rinsing them in water or placing them in a bowl of salt.
8. Aquamarine
Aquamarine is the stone of wisdom, truth, and intuition. It calms and balances emotions, providing grounding where stress and anxiety are present. Aquamarine can also flush toxins from the body and help ground you during meditation.
Like many other crystals on this list, aquamarine’s bright blue color will fade white if placed in direct sunlight for too long. To cleanse and recharge aquamarine, wash it with water. Since aquamarine is associated with the element of water, this is a good way to remember.
9. Sapphire
Sapphire is an attractive crystal with healing properties that include increased mental and psychic awareness, calmness, and intuition, bringing heightened mental clarity for meditation and decision-making.
Sapphire boasts a dark royal blue color, which will fade when exposed to the sun for long periods. Instead, use sage smoke to cleanse your sapphire crystals or place them under the light of a full moon.
10. Turquoise
Turquoise brings luck, tranquility, creativity, and mental clarity. It can also help you seek trust and truth, especially where it concerns speaking the truth, as it’s a crystal strongly associated with the throat chakra.
As its name suggests, turquoise is a deep turquoise color. Avoid placing it in the sun to prevent fading and discoloration. Instead, you can cleanse turquoise and recharge its healing vibrations by placing it under a full moon or immersing it in a bowl of salt.
11. Fluorite
Fluorite comes in many colors, including purple, green, and rainbow, with healing properties that encourage growth, speed up emotional healing, and increase focus and intuition, being strongly linked to third eye chakra and crown chakra.
Fluorite can be recharged in sunlight that’s not harsh or too bright, although it’s recommended not to do so for more than 15 minutes.
The color can fade, and the crystal itself can overheat, making it susceptible to cracking. It’s much safer to recharge fluorite overnight under the light of a full moon.
12. Topaz
Topaz is known to heal blockages and improve the flow of energy along the meridian points. It’s associated with the sacral chakra and solar plexus chakra, allowing the channeling of positive stimulating energies where needed.
Topaz is another crystal that can fade and become brittle in harsh sunlight, turning its orange color white. Avoid this by recharging it with water cleansing, by cleansing it with clear quartz, or by using sage smoke.
13. Citrine
Like topaz, citrine is an amber-colored crystal with a translucent appearance. It promotes improved self-esteem and feelings of happiness, as well as luck, growth, and success. So you’re feeling a lack of motivation due to low self-esteem, citrine is one of the best crystals to draw strength from.
Citrine will fade if exposed to sunlight for too long. To cleanse citrine and recharge its happiness-giving healing properties, place it under a full moon overnight. You can also bury it underground, leaving it to recharge for 24 hours.
14. Hiddenite
Hiddenite is a translucent green crystal. Its healing properties include heightened wisdom, gratitude, and emotional balance, making it one of the best crystals for meditation and mental clarity in times of uncertainty or fear.
Since hiddenite is already light in color, exposing it to direct sunlight can result in the hiddenite crystal becoming completely clear.
If you think your hiddenite crystal needs recharging, bury it underground to reconnect its energies with the earth and restore its healing properties.
Alternatively, smudge the crystal with herbs to cleanse it.
15. Beryl
Beryl is a family of crystals of various attractive colors. Beryl can help connect you to your inner and higher self, increasing vibrations that promote spiritual growth and emotional healing. It also offers physical properties, such as improving organ functions – especially disorders of the heart.
Beryl can fade and become brittle and more susceptible to cracking when exposed to harsh sunlight for long periods. Instead, you can cleanse and recharge your beryl crystals with sound cleansing or salt cleansing. You can also cleanse beryl crystals by washing them with salt water.
Conclusion
That wraps up our list of 15 crystals that cannot be exposed to the sun – these healing crystals can lose their color and, in some cases, become brittle, which can result in cracks or susceptibility to cracking in the future.
While these are some of the most popular crystals that shouldn’t be exposed to the sun, there are more, so always make sure to find out the best method for cleansing your crystals.
Alternative methods to sunlight cleansing include water cleansing, sound cleansing, moonlight cleansing, and burying the crystals underground.
For crystals that can’t be placed in direct sunlight, these alternative methods will restore and strengthen their vibrational frequencies so that you can fully benefit from their various healing properties.
Hi, my name is Andrea Daehma and I have been collecting and using crystals in my everyday life for just over six years now.
I have my own collection of crystals gracing my house, several for every scenario I could think of.
Learning about crystals has truly changed my life, and I want to help others turn their life around too. Please enjoy my website and find your own small stone to begin your crystal journey with!
