Buying a diamond is not something that is done without some forethought because it is, frankly, an important purchase. Fortunately, the most important elements you need to know are easily remembered because they all begin with the letter C: cut, clarity, color and carat size.
There are other components that you may wish to become familiar with, such as girdle and table, and these will be explained as well in the following paragraphs. But “the four C's” are the most important points to know about. What you learn will go a long way to helping you make the perfect choice.
Diamonds.neildiamonds.com presents a guide for its buyers that would simplify the understanding of diamonds and help you make the perfect choice.
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| Diamond Cut |
| The cut of a diamond enhances its beauty and adds a dazzling sparkle. Mistaking shape and size to be the same is one of the most common error that buyer make. The cut of a diamond refers to the symmetry, angle and proportions given to it internally to reflect the light to attain the brilliant sparkle. Whereas the shape of a diamond refers to ones personal choice. The cut of a diamond austerely impacts its brilliance and also affects its price. |
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| Diamond Color |
| Color is one of the four main characteristics of the 4 C’s of a diamond. It is important that a buyer does pay importance to the color as it also determines the quality of a diamond. It is advisable that a buyer has some basic knowledge about the grading of colors of a diamond for a better understanding and be able to make the right choice. A diamond which is chemical free and structurally perfect would be absolutely colorless with no hues. |
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| Diamond Clarity |
| The visual appearance of existing internal characteristics of a diamond called inclusions and surface imperfection popularly know as blemishes, is referred as the clarity of a diamond. It is one of the four pillars of 4 C’s. Inclusions in a diamond can be made by foreign particles or another diamond crystal or by naturally any structural imperfections like tiny cracks. Flawless or nearly flawless diamonds are very rare and very expensive Diamonds.neildiamonds.com provides with the some of the clearest diamonds. Learn more how to choose the right grade of clarity for the perfect diamond ring of your choice. |
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| Diamond Carat Weight |
| Because it is composed of a generally transparent material, diamond lets light pass through it, even in its most rough condition. But early on in history, stone cutters realized that you can get extra sparkle if they faceted the diamond, and they set about finding out the best combination of facet size and shape and angle to get the most sparkle. Eventually, one design with 58 facets was shown to be the most efficient way to maximize the stone’s best qualities and this became known as the ideal cut. It remains the industry standard, and is the shape that most people recognize as being a diamond shape.
This does not mean that diamonds of the same size are equal when it comes to cut. A lot depends on the skill of the diamond cutter as even the slightest variance in the angle of a single facet or its size or its effect on the symmetry of the stone will affect its value. Diamond cutting is part art but within the confines of exacting scientific boundaries.
This does not mean, however, that the diamonds that are cut to an ideal shape are automatically the best. Not at all. Part of he job of a highly skilled cutter is to determine what shape will be the best one to create the largest possible polished diamond from a given piece of rough. And rough diamonds come in all kinds of shapes. So a pear- or emerald-shaped diamond has as much claim to being perfect as the ideal cut, particularly if it produced a larger stone. In fact, most of the world's biggest, most famous diamonds are not ideal cuts because the chief goal was to maximize their size.
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| Diamond Enhancements |
| Diamond enhancements, known also as diamond treatments, involve several techniques for improving the gemological characteristics of gems that are already cut and polished. Jewelers treat the diamonds mainly to improve their clarity and other quality parameters by laser drilling and other means so that the gems can be sold at higher prices. This is the reason that United States Federal Trade Commission requires the jewelers to clearly disclose to the customers all the treatments done on the diamond. |
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| Diamond Fluorescence |
| It may surprise some people to learn that diamonds have color since many people know diamonds only as cut gemstones that are as clear as optical glass. But the truth is that the bulk of the diamonds on sale have a tinge of color ranging from the barest hint of a color to a strong hue. Like diamond cutting, determining the color of a diamond is a precise process and it affects the value of the stone.
Color in diamonds comes from chemical impurities in the stone and imperfections in its molecular structure. The variety of impurities that can be found is large enough to give the stone a potential array of colors, the predominant ones being yellow and brown.
This color is considered normal and does not mark a stone as immediately inferior to another. Diamonds with the most intense colors are referred to as “fancy color” diamonds and have names like cognac or champagne diamonds. In fact, the ones with the most extreme amount of color are rarer than those that are absolutely clear. A canary yellow diamond, for example, is a more prized – and more expensive – possession for many collectors than a comparably-sized clear diamond.
This does not mean that diamonds that are absolutely free of impurities and imperfections are commonplace. Quite the opposite. Crystal-clear diamonds are valuable and sought-after because of their rarity as well as their beauty.
The stones between these two extremes are graded on the scale shown here.
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| Diamond Certificate |
| Clarity, as the name implies, refers to how clear the material is that the stone is made of, and what surface imperfections it may have. These have a direct effect on how light passes into a diamond and bounces around within it before finally exiting.
The internal flaws are called inclusions and they appear for several reasons, usually either foreign material within the diamond or even another diamond crystal inside it or an imperfection such as a tiny crack in the structure of the material itself.
Surface imperfections are popularly called blemishes and they can be either major or minor and will affect the value of the stone accordingly.
Clarity is determined by the number, size, color, location, orientation and visibility of the inclusions and blemishes as seen under a 10X magnification. As mentioned earlier, flawless stones are very rare, so it is likely that you will be considering stones that are less than perfect. That's perfectly fine, particularly as many of these imperfections are not visible to the naked eye and even then are often visible only when you are scrutinizing the diamond very closely.
Here is a chart showing how diamonds are graded for clarity.
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| Diamond Care |
| Diamonds are expensive gems that you would not be buying very often. So, an utmost care of the precious stones is a must once you have bought them as an investment tool for future or in the studded form in jewelry like rings and pendants. Though, a feature of diamonds is that they are the hardest substance and can only be damaged when hit by another diamond, still some other types of damages can occur to them. |
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Diamond Education Center
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