Beginners guide to buying a diamond
Purchasing a diamond is a milestone investment whether you’re buying one as a wonderful present to yourself, as a reward for a promotion, or as a special gift for someone else. Diamonds often come alongside some of life’s most important moments so it’s important to make your purchase carefully and get the best diamond for your money.
As experts in the jewellery industry we have put together a few tips to help you choose the perfect diamond.
The 4 C's
Diamond quality and value are graded on four universally agreed attributes,
often called the 4 C's.
Cut, Colour, Clarity, Carat.
If you step into Leskes Jewellers you will hear our team use these terms often.
Cut: Cut describes not only the shape of the diamond and the quality of its precision and workmanship. In reality, the quality of the cut determines a diamond's sparkle. Precise, even cuts allow the facets to interact with the light. The higher the grade, the more light will be transmitted by the stone. By far, the most commonly used diamond shapes are Round Brilliant followed by Princess Cut (also known as Square Modified Brilliant). Pear and Oval diamonds have increased in popularity lately, but more than anything else, your choice will come down to personal taste.
Colour: When it comes to a diamond's value, colourless will always be the winner. The more colourless, the more valuable. The notable exceptions to this standard are "fancy" coloured stones, which can also be extremely valuable.
If a diamond has a noticeable yellow tint, the sparkle is diminished, and this reduces the stone's value. Colour becomes more important as carat weight increases because it's easier to see colour through larger stones.
Clarity: Few things in nature are perfect. During the diamond growth process, internal impurities and imperfections are formed, otherwise referred to as inclusions. The clarity grading of a diamond indicates the degree of the inclusions that are present, their position, and how easy they are to see. In many cases, these flaws evade the buyers eyes and may only be evident to our professional eye with a microscope.
Carat: Diamond carat weight refers to how much a diamond weighs and is primarily what determines and influences the value. Diamonds come in various carat weights, and as the weight increases, the more valuable and rarer they become.
While the carat and size of a diamond aren’t interchangeable, they are certainly related. The average engagement ring diamond weighs in at slightly less than one carat. This is because the price of diamonds increases sharply at the one-carat mark due to high demand
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