Your Guide to Understanding Diamonds
There’s a lot more to diamonds than the four Cs you keep hearing about. I wrote this guide to help you set your priorities in order to feel confidant buying the stone of your dreams.
The quality and therefore price of a stone is determined by looking at 4 major factors: cut, carat, color and clarity. A reputable jeweler should be able to give you clear information on these 4 factors for any diamond they sell you.
The good new is that with some skill and creativity, you may be able to get a stone you absolutely love for a price that you can afford. This guide gives you basic insight on how my fellow jewelry designers and I can help you achieve that.
Cut
A skilled jeweler can look at a stone with a jeweler’s loo and determine its cut quality in a few minutes. What we look for generally are proportions that resemble an ideal or close of ideal cut.
A well-cut stone sparkles more and therefore has a higher value than a poorly cut stone. This is because each facet in the diamond is cut in a way that will help the light entering the stone to perfectly bounce and reflect onto another facet. We want each ray of light to linger inside the stone as long as possible thus creating beautiful brilliance and fire.
There are standard proportions that ideally cut stones should have:
An excellent cut stone has these exact proportions, will reflect light perfectly and be full of life and fire, and therefore is higher in value. A poor cut stone may have anything from the wrong proportions, a slanted table, a chipped or an off-centre culet, a too thick or too thin girdle, extra facets or poor symmetry. A poorly cut stone will not reflect light well and will appear dull and lifeless, and therefor cheaper.
Try to consult your jeweler on the cut of the stone you are considering buying. Cut is rarely something you’d want to compromise on, since it profoundly affects the look of a faceted stone. But keep in mind that there are times when a very good or even a good cut may be all you need. A skilled designer should be able to help you by placing prongs or a bezel in a way that covers some flaws.
Carat
A carat is a unite of weight measurement. For diamonds, 200 milligrams = 1 carat.
Jewelers refer to the carat weight of a stone in points. There are 100 points in a carat, so a 75 pointer would be 75/100 or ¾ of a carat.
Well cut stones of the same carat weight should always have the same dimensions. So ideally, a carat weight is also an indicator of size. A 1 carat diamond should more or less measure at 6.5mm in dimeter for example.
Please note that a 1 carat diamond will bot be the same size as a 1 carat emerald or a 1 carat ruby. Every type of gemstone has a different specific gravity, which means that some stones are denser than others. A 1 carat emerald is larger than a 1 carat diamond because emeralds are less dense than diamonds, while a 1 carat ruby is smaller than a 1 carat diamond because rubies are denser than diamonds.
To understand the way carat weight affects the value of a stone you need to think of it as a non-proportional scale, as in there are disproportionate jumps in price as carat weight goes up. A top quality 2 carat stone will not cost twice as much as a top quality 1 carat stone, it can easily cost three times as much. This is because great quality diamonds of larger sizes are rarer and that drives their prices up.
Price Jumps Compared to Increasing Carat Weight
You may however be able to get the same size diamond as the one you desire for cheaper, if you’re willing to be flexible on issues like exact carat weight, color and clarity. Read on to learn how.
As you go down the weight scale, the price per carat will significantly drop. A 95 pointer will cost a lot less per carat than an exact 1 carat stone, but when set may look similar to a 1 carat stone. So, in order to get the look of a 1 carat stone, you may want to consider going for a 95 or a 90 pointer and work with your jeweler on a setting style that will help the stone look even bigger than it is. White gold bezel settings for example are known to make a stone look larger. A skilled designer should be able to give you good advice on how you can achieve the illusion of a bigger size with a smaller stone. You just need to be clear about your priorities.
Color
Diamonds come in all shades of the rainbow. Fancy colored diamonds are a whole different animal. Colorless diamonds are what I’ll be discussing here today.
Truly colorless diamonds are very rare and extremely high in value. Most diamonds out there have a yellowish or greyish tint to them, the more obvious the tint, the less expensive the stone is.
Color grading is done by highly trained professionals, under special lighting on special white trays. A stone is given a letter that represent it’s color grade:
| Diamond Color Grading System | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| COLORLESS | NEAR COLORLESS | FAINT YELLOWISH* TINT | VERY LIGHT YELLOWISH* TINT | TINTED LIGHT YELLOWISH* | ||||||||||||||||||
| D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
| Loose diamonds appear colorless. | When mounted in a setting these diamonds may appear colorless. |
Smaller diamonds look colorless when mounted, Diamonds of 0.5 ct or more show traces of color. |
These diamonds show increasingly yellowish* tints and appear "off-white" |
|||||||||||||||||||
| * Usually yellow but can be grey | ||||||||||||||||||||||
The good news is that you’ll never be able to tell the difference within 1 range even when comparing diamonds side by side. Diamonds set in jewelry are harder to grade accurately, this is why it is important to know everything you need to know about your stone before its mounted.
A reputable jeweler will be able to provide you with an appraisal that describes the characteristics of the stone and it’s estimated value. Stones of high value weighing 1 ct and above should come with a certificate that lists their carat weight, cut description, color grade, and a clarity grade with a map of inclusions.
Clarity
Clarity is probably the most important deciding factor when it comes to the value of diamonds. Clarity grades a stone on the type, size, color and location of its inclusions.
Inclusions can be so small that they can’t be seen even with a x10 loop, or too obvious that they can be seen with the naked eye from a distance and the range of grades cover everything in between:
| GIA Diamond Clarity Grading System | |
|---|---|
| FL | No internal or external flaws can be seen to a trained eye when using a x10 Loupe |
| IF | No internal flaws, only minor external flaws can be seen with a x10 loupe. These flaws can usually be removed with polishing (such as nicks or small pits on the table or girdle) |
| VVS1 | Flaws that are very very difficult to see to a trained eye when using a x10 loupe |
| VVS2 | |
| VS1 | Very small inclusions difficult to see with a trained eye under x10 magnification |
| VS2 | |
| SI1 | Flaws can be seen fairly easily by a qualified observer with x10 magnification |
| SI2 | |
| I1 | Flaws can be seen fairly easily by a qualified observer without magnification |
| I2 | |
| I3 | |
| FL = Flawless. IF = Internally Flawless, VVS = Very Very Slightly included, VS = Very Slightly included, SI = Slightly Included, I = Included |
|
A skilled stone cutter can be able to cut a stone in a way that hides its inclusions and make the most out of it so that a customer can get a larger stone for a less expensive price.
Other Diamond Options
Salt and Pepper Diamonds
In the past, inclusions were considered imperfections that should not be seen in a diamond. Now a days the market is seeing a growing demand for heavily included diamonds, so much so that a new category has been established: Salt and Pepper Diamonds. S&P diamonds which are some of the most beautiful and financially approachable options available for the modern customer display an array of inclusions that may resemble clouds or star clusters and can be very unique and display a lot of personality.
What’s important to look out for here, is inclusions that may be dangerous to the structure of the stone. These inclusions may cause internal fractures or even breakage over time with wear and tear.
Diamond Alternatives
The market is filled with diamond alternatives that offer the bling you might be after for a fraction of the price. There are 2 categories of diamond alternatives: synthetic diamonds and diamond simulants.
Synthetic Diamonds
Synthetic diamonds or lab grown diamonds are man made diamonds that have the same chemical composition and structure as natural diamonds. They are created by simulating the natural high pressure and high temperature environments underground to provide high quality diamonds for a fraction of the price.
Lab grown diamonds can be very high quality and can come in larger sizes, but are not as highly regarded as natural ones since they are not rare and can be manufactured at any time.
Lab grown diamonds however are considered to be environmentally friendly, since they are produced without damaging the planet or putting lives in harm’s way.
Diamond Simulants
Diamond simulants are colorless stones that resemble a similarity to diamonds but that have a different chemical and structural composition than that of diamonds.
One of the best and most commonly used diamond simulants is Moissanite. At a hardness of 9.25 and a very high dispersion, a moissanite can effectively replace a diamond for a fraction of the price. Moissanite displays a higher play of color than diamond though, and once pointed out to you, upon inspection, you’ll be able to tell a moissanite from a diamond fairly easily. But if size vs price is a challenge for you, moissanite can be a the answer here.
Other diamond look-a-likes include colorless topaz, colorless quartz, CZ, synthetic colorless spinel and even flint glass.
Perhaps my favorite diamond replacement would be colorless corundum (or colorless sapphire). It is durable, beautiful and can hold its value over time. Colorless sapphire can easily be distinguished from diamonds as it does not have any play of color and very low dispersion, but if you want to stay away from diamonds for whatever reason but still want something classic and valuable, colorless sapphire is your friend.
I hope this helped you set your priorities so that you come to this process well informed. Remember that I’m happy to answer any questions you may have about diamonds, all you need to know are your priorities and I’ll be able to help you select the stone of your dreams with ease.
Want to learn more about bespoke jewelry design? Check out this helpful guide into my process.
