Diamond Education
All you need to know about the 4C’s:
Cut, Color, Clarity, Carats.
CUT
This is probably the most important factor in determining a diamond’s value and beauty.
A finished diamond shows the skill of the cutter – who fashions the diamond to bring out the brilliance and scintillation – to make it sparkle from across the room. Technology can be used to assess the diamond’s light performance and hence the quality of its cut.
A diamond’s performance depends on the cutter’s decision of angles, placement of the facets, and the skill to place those facets precisely.
Once cut, getting a diamond to its full luster takes time and careful polishing. A poor polish can reduce the brightness and sparkle of a diamond.
The quality of the cut can increase (or decrease) the value of the stone up to 50% or more. When the cut is more precise, the stone is more captivating the eye.
Color
Not all diamonds are colorless, like the ones most often seen in jewelry. In fact, they come in many hues ranging from colorless to light yellow and even light brown.
In truth, the rarest of all are the colorless diamonds. Diamonds with color are known as fancy, and their grading is unique, like a fingerprint.
Determining the color or colorless diamond is done with Comparison Diamonds in a controlled atmosphere.
Clarity
This is another important thing to look for when buying the perfect diamond, as it can also have an effect on a diamond’s value. Diamonds can have internal characteristics, also known as inclusions, as well as external characteristics that are known as blemishes. A flawless diamond, one that has neither inclusions nor blemishes, is very rare. When a grader looks at clarity, he uses magnification and specific lighting and determines the diamond’s clarity grade based on the particular characteristics he sees.
Carats
Carats are the units of measurement that are used to determine a diamond’s weight, where one carat is equal to one fifth (1/5) of a gram, and is then divided into 100 points.
