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ou’re celebrating a momentous occasion and decide that a diamond is the perfect way to symbolize that moment. It may be the first diamond you’ve ever purchased, or maybe you are upgrading to a larger diamond. You should be beaming with excitement, glowing with a smile so wide it hurts, but for some reason, you are anxious. This is an important and costly purchase. What do you know about buying a diamond? Who do you trust? What do you believe? You’ve decided to swim in the sea of information on the internet but now, armed with more information, you are either more confident or even more confused. Now what? I’m here to tell you to stop, and just breathe. All will be right if you take this simple piece of advice: Trust your own eye and heart. We’d like to unlock some of the mystery of the diamond, debunk some myths, and help you make an informed decision. Most people have heard of the 4 Cs — color, cut, clarity and carat — but what do these words really mean, and what’s the most important? The first thing you should know is that these things are, contrary to popular belief, measures of rarity not beauty. Just because something is deemed rare doesn’t make it pleasing to everyone’s eye. Color, for example, is the absence or presence of body color in a diamond. The scale that most people are familiar with starts with D (for diamond) and goes down the alphabet, D. E. F. G., etc. all the way to Z. There’s an assumption that D is the best. No, D is the rarest. It’s also a range of shades. Have you ever tried to buy white paint only to realize how many shades of white there are? Studies have shown that when looking at diamonds without being prejudiced by the grading of a diamond, many people prefer a diamond with a little body color or a little warmth. Many beautiful and lively diamonds are actually in the H to K range. How a stone is made or cut is truly what unleashes the fire and brilliance in the diamond. When a cutter is given a diamond to facet, he’s faced with a decision to either save weight or sacrifice weight to achieve ideal or near ideal proportions. When a diamond loses precious carat weight for the sake of ideal proportions, the price of the diamond is usually higher for the finished product, even though it eventually ends up weighing less. Clarity denotes what is going on inside and on the surface of the diamond. I prefer to simplify clarity in this way: What does it look like with the naked eye? First, study it hard without any aid of magnification. Do you see any distinguishing characteristics that distract from the brilliance of the diamond? That’s the most important thing. After all, how often will you or your friends be magnifying your diamond? Then study it with magnification. Sometimes you may see little white lines, sometimes clouds. You might see little black spots. The grading scale of clarity refers more to how noticeable these characteristics are than to how many are inside the diamond. What size is best? That’s strictly a personal decision. For some, a larger stone is the dream, and they might be willing to give up a little on color or clarity to stay on budget. To others, the color, cut, and clarity are the deciding factors. DIAMONDS THE DEFINITIVE BUYERS GUIDE Y
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