Diamond Rings: The Basics, Part 2
Here’s some basic information about judging a diamond’s quality… pretty important to know if you’re buying a diamond ring, right?
Generally, the information that you need to know about a diamond is called the “4 Cs.” The 4 Cs are cut, clarity, carat, and color.
Cut
This is NOT the shape of the diamond. Cut is the pattern of angled facets on the diamond. Don’t know what that means? Basically, cut is how brilliant the diamond looks. A good cut reflects as much light as possible back to the eye and gives the diamond the bright, brilliant look. A poor cut can make the diamond look dull.
What you need to know about cuts is the different grades of cuts. There are generally 4 different grades of cuts:
-Excellent/Ideal Cut – These are the very best diamonds. They reflect almost all the light that enters and they are beautifully brilliant.
-Very Good Cut – These are the next best, after excellent/ideal cuts. They reflect a lot of light, and they are still pretty brilliant looking.
-Good Cut – These are usually cut to maximize the size of the diamond a little more than both excellent and very good cuts. In maximizing the size, some of the proportions of the diamond have to be slightly off, so they aren’t as brilliant as excellent or very good cuts. These are usually pretty good values, though.
-Fair and Poor Cut – These diamonds don’t reflect light as well as any of the other 3 cuts, so they cost less but don’t look as brilliant.
By the way, cut is generally considered the most important part of the 4 Cs.
Clarity
Clarity tells you how many flaws (also called inclusions) the diamond has. This is the industry standard grading scale for clarity:
Flawless- No internal or external flaws at all. These are very rare and precious.
Internally Flawless – No internal flaws, but some minute external flaws. Again, very rare and precious diamonds.
Very Very Slightly Included – Minute inclusions which are very difficult to detect under 10x magnification, even by a trained gemologist.
Very Slightly Included – Minute inclusions that can only be seen, with difficulty, under 10x magnification.
Slightly Included – Inclusions are visible under 10x magnification, or also by unaided eye to an experienced grader.
Included – Inclusions are visible to the naked eye.
Carat
Carat is a unit of measurement that measures the weight of diamonds and gemstones. The higher the carat, the more weight in the diamond.
Higher carat is usually better, but the quality of the diamond (cut, clarity, and color) are much more important than just the carat number.
Color
Diamonds have very slight tints to them. The less color the diamond has, the higher grade on the color scale it gets.
To keep it simple, because there are two different color scales, I will only include the 5 description classifications for diamond color:
-Colorless
-Near Colorless
-Faint Yellow
-Very Light Yellow
-Light Yellow
The closer to colorless a diamond, the higher quality that diamond is considered to be.
Looking for some diamond rings? I will post some awesome, beautiful, diamond rings here shortly.
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