Colour, Cut, Clarity and Carat

Color

Cut

Clarity

Carat

Colour means is it yellow, white, pink or even black. You can get coloured diamonds but the best are white. Whiter the better, ideally you will look for a G or H colour, it goes from "D" which is the best/whitest, up along the alphabet getting yellower along the way.

This is to do if A: is it round, square, oval, pear, emerald shaped or marquises? B: how well is it cut, proportions, are they right for the stone style? Cut is very important these days as the cut can determine the out come price, if the proportions are all wrong then the light will not shine to its full potential when it enters the stone and bounces back out. This is the only real factor that man has to deal with in relation to the quality of a diamond. The rest are all natural unless we consider the treatments that can be done on some stones. I will go into that in a following article as this really only applies to non certified diamonds. Here I am detailing certified.

This has to do with, visibility. Are there any marks inside or on the surface of the stone. These can look like tiny black dots or little clouds or tiny chips inside. Clarity is measured in stages. I will go into greater detail in the following pages but for now I will say this, anything SI2 and above is safe with the naked eye. If you can't see anything with the naked eye then nobody else will either, in saying that, you then must take a closer look with a 10x Lupe/eyeglass to see the inside fully and behind a white background with plenty of light, even ask for the ring to be washed out in an ultrasonic and then you can get the best view possible while the stone is set in the ring. For the very best view the stone needs to be loose and out from the mount but most jewellers won't go that far and allow you to remove the stone from its setting.

This is the weight measurement of the stone. There are one hundred points in a carat so a fifty point diamond is measured like this: .50ct Here's a thing, a .49ct diamond will cost you a good deal less than a .50ct as the .50ct stone has reached a weight that puts it into a new bracket and a .99ct stone will be considerably less than a 1.0ct stone. So obviously four .25ct diamonds will cost you far less than one 1.0ct diamond, one 1.0ct diamond is far more rare than four .25ct diamonds so the cost per point goes up by about four times. This is how the industry works.

So as you can see, there are numerous factors involved and you should do your home work before jumping right in and buying if you want to find the best value for money and as with all consumer items, shop around.