Want to know everything about diamond quality before you purchase jewelry?
Evaluating a
Diamond for its Quality
4C's of a Diamond
Diamond
is a stunningly beautiful precious stone and before evaluating a
diamond for its quality, you must educate yourself with the 4 C's,
which are four important characteristics of diamonds, which defines
the gem stone and its overall value and worth. The 4 C's for defining
a diamond are cut, clarity, color, and carats.
Cut
One
of the most important factors in evaluating a diamond for its quality
is the cut of a diamond.
A diamond with a perfect cut will be brilliant and reflects light in
a stunning fashion. The cut of a diamond actually refers to how many
well-proportioned facets are in the stone.
The
cut also refers to diamond's shape, such as pear, emerald, oval, or
round. The angles and shapes of a diamond are important to a
diamond's optical quality and the overall sparkle of the diamond. Too
deep or shallow cut diamonds will have dull and lifeless appearance.
Clarity
Is
the diamond you are examining dull and cloudy or clear? Clarity
of a Diamond refers to how clear the stone actually is. If it
has inclusions, flaws or imperfections, then it will not be worth as
much as another diamond with relatively few flaws. Jewelers rate
clarity using the following chart prepared by the Gemological
Institute of America (GIA):
* I1, I2, and I3- These diamonds have imperfections or flaws which
can be seen with the naked eye.
* SI1, SI2, SI3- These diamonds have small inclusions.
* VS1, VS2 -These diamonds have very small inclusions.
* VVS1, VVS2- These diamonds have very, very small inclusions.
* Internally Flawless-These diamonds may have very minor blemishes
on the outside of the stone.
* Flawless-These diamonds do not have any inclusions and are
considered to be perfect and is very expensive and rare.
Color
Perfect
Ideal diamonds are considered to be transparent or colorless.
Perfectly clear Colorless diamonds
are the most expensive and rarest of diamonds. Colors
of a diamond are rated with an alphabet grading system of the
Gemological Institute of America (GIA) that starts with "D"
and ends with "Z". Diamonds which are completely colorless
fall in the "D" and "E" grade while colored,
fancy diamonds are at the other end of the alphabet, at "Y"
and "Z."
Jewelers
mainly use two main ways to judge a diamond based on color. A set of
reference stones are used sometimes and find the closest match
between the diamond and the reference stone to determine its color
grade. Alternatively, some jeweler uses a colorimeter, which
electronically measures the color of the stone and determines its
grade within 1/3 of a grade.
Carat / Weight
Diamond
Carat is the term used to describe the weight of a diamond. 1
Carat= 200 milligrams. A diamond with a high amount of carat weight
is usually more expensive than multiple smaller diamonds of
equivalent amount of carats. Finding the larger diamonds is rarer of
an occurrence that's why diamonds of larger carat weight are always
expensive. Evaluating a diamond
quality by the amount of carats is difficult since diamonds with
different shape and different levels of clarity will be priced
differently even if they have the same amount of carats. |
