Cut
Most round, brilliant-cut or fancy-shaped diamonds possess 58 carefully angled
flat surfaces, called facets, whose placement will affect the fire, brilliance
and ultimate beauty of your diamond. It is the skill and imagination of the craftsman's
effort in the Diamond cutting process, that reflects the maximum amount of light
back to the eye.
Color
The most prized diamonds are colorless diamonds, because their beauty depends
entirely upon their remarkable optical properties. In such diamonds, all the colors
of the rainbow are reflected back to your eye. While the majority of gem diamonds
appear to be colorless, others can contain increasing shades of yellow to brown,
some of which are referred to as champagne diamonds. Other diamonds of exceptional
color--red, blue, green, pink, and amber--are known as "Fancies." The
color grading scale varies from totally colorless to light color or tinted. The
difference between one grade and its neighbor is very subtle. Experts use master
diamonds of known color for comparison. The
lowest quality of diamonds are yellow in color. Slightly better
are light yellow. Better are very light yellow. Good quality are faint
yellow. Very good quality are near colorless. The excellent are completely
colorless.
Clarity
Diamonds because of their unique optical properties, are capable of producing
the maximum amount of brilliance. Minute crystals of diamond or other minerals
are contained in almost all diamonds, a diamond that is virtually free of inclusions
and surface markings will be judged as flawless. In these type of flawless diamonds,
inclusions do not interfere with the passage of light or spoil the beauty. But
these diamonds are expensive and extremely rare To determine a diamond's
clarity grading, it must be examined under a 10x magnification by a trained, skilled
eye. Without high magnification, you may never see these inclusions. However,
the fewer there are, the rarer your diamond will be. The
GIA scale uses abbreviations. This is what they stand for: "FL"
stands for "Flawless" Also used is "IF" which stands
for " Internally Flawless."(no inclusions visible under 10X magnification) "V
V S" stands for "Very very slightly Imperfect." (inclusions are
minute and difficult to locate under 10X magnification) "V S"
stands for "Very slightly imperfect." (inclusions are minor and hard
to detect under 10X magnification) "S I" stands for "Slightly
Imperfect." (inclusions are noticeable and relatively easy to locate under
10X magnification) "I" stands for "Imperfect." (inclusions
are obvious under 10X magnification and are visible to the naked eye)
Carat-Weight
As with all precious
stones, the weight--and therefore the size--of a diamond is expressed in carats.
One carat is divided into 100 "points" so that a diamond of 25 points
is described as a quarter of a carat or 0.25 carats. Size is the most obvious
factor in determining the value of a diamond, but now you know that two equal
sizes can have very unequal prices depending on their quality. However, remember
that diamonds of high quality can be found in all size ranges
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