Diamond Buying Guide
Learn all about diamonds so you can have the utmost confidence in your diamond purchase.
What are the 4C's?
Cut
A diamond’s brilliance is largely determined by its cut. An expertly-cut diamond with perfectly symmetrical and aligned facets will reflect light beautifully, leading to unrivalled brilliance. True expertise is required to create facets with perfect proportions that maximise light and increase a diamond’s signature sparkle.
Color
White or colourless diamonds exist on a scale of many different shades, ranging from brilliant white to pale yellow. These subtle differences are graded on a colour scale from D (colourless) to Z (light yellow). Beautiful coloured diamonds, in hues of yellow, pink, blue, orange, green and red, for example, go beyond all other measures of rarity, and a graded based on their intensity and enticing depth of colour.
Clarity
Diamonds are created by tremendous heat and pressure deep within the earth. This thoroughly organic process means that virtually all diamonds contain internal inclusions and surface blemishes. Diamonds with fewer of these characteristics are deemed to have a higher clarity, ranging from FL, or Flawless, to I, signalling a number of inclusions.
Carat
In the ancient world, carob seeds were used as a reference for the weight of individual diamonds. Today, this historic practice has led to the word carat, which is now the contemporary measure of weight for all diamonds. Precise measurements are taken to the hundredth decimal place to ensure complete accuracy. A metric ‘carat’ is defined as 200 milligrams.
