10 Things You Need To Know About Diamond Engagement Rings
1.Beautiful diamonds are available in every price range! Yes, you need to have realistic expectations about what diamonds are available at different price points, but the performance of a diamond isn’t tied to its size or its the price point. We have hand-made custom diamond engagement rings in 18K gold starting at around $1500.They are special, original, handmade pieces with diamonds that sparkle like crazy and they do not have to require a second mortgage
2. Cut is the most important ‘C’!Carat, Color, and Clarity may be more famous, but Cut is a major piece of performance. Cut speaks to the actual faceting of the diamond; how precise the meet points are, how nice the polish is, whether the angles are ideal for light return or not, whether the table and the depth are optimal for light return…or not. Cut can be very complicated to evaluate-luckily when you shop with us you don’t have to! We never show stones we believe have inferior cuts and thus lower performance. But trust your own eye too, even without knowing why you will most likely pick the best cut stone out of a lineup because it will be the one that returns the most light to your eye in the form of sparkles and rainbows!
3. Diamonds are tough, but not indestructible! Diamonds are the hardest stone on the MOHs Hardness Scale at a perfect 10, so they are a great choice to wear every day in your engagement ring and wedding bands. But nothing is indestructible and diamonds do have two directions of perfect cleavage; so if you knock the stone just right it will crack or chip. You can fix chipped diamonds by recutting them, but it’s not always a winning proposition. You may lose too much weight to make it worth it or it may be a small enough chip that it doesn’t affect the soundness of the stone. The best way to avoid damaging your diamonds is to remove them when you are being very rough with your hands-rock climbing, weight lifting, gardening, mucking out stalls, all best done without your diamonds.
4. Diamonds are not an investment! Not in the traditional financial sense, anyway. Eventually, inflation moves the market up and you can recoup what you paid for a diamond on the second-hand market, but it won’t be in ten years and it doesn’t apply to smaller stones. Purchasing diamonds is an investment in happiness to commemorate milestones in life so the wearer can always remember how they felt on their wedding day every time they see those rainbows reflect on the ceiling of their car while driving. Buy a diamond because it makes you happy, not because it will make you money.
5. The setting is just as important as the diamond! From a design standpoint, the mounting matters, but even more than that the mounting has a lot to do with the longevity of your ring. It should complement your lifestyle; do your work with your hands or at a desk? Do you want to wear a band or just a single ring? These things inform the design of the mounting and ensure a ring that will protect your diamond and last throughout a lifetime of wear.
6. Coloregrades are grouped in categories and significantly affect the price! Diamond’s color grading starts with the letter “D”, which is as icy white as a diamond can get. ColorsD/E/F are called the Colorless grades and they are the most expensive. Colors G/H/I/Jare is called the Near Colorless grades and when set, they should be very white to the eye. Anything under a “J” color starts to show a yellow, grey, or brown body color even when set.
7. Clarity grades are also grouped into categories and also greatly affect the price! A flawless diamond is internally and externally free from all imperfections-carbon inclusions, feathers, clouds, pinpoints, everything. An Internally Flawless diamond is completely clean on the inside but has a natural, abrasion, or chip on the surface. These diamonds are exceptionally rare and exceptionally expensive! The VVS category indicates a diamond that is Very, Very Slightly Included; VS indicates Very Slightly Included. Both are what we call ‘eye clean’-meaning you need a trained eye and microscope to see the inclusions and imperfections in these stones. SI is used to indicate a Slightly Includeddiamond-there a bit more wiggle room in this grade, but in general SI1 diamonds are also eye-clean, or the nice ones are, with white pinpoints off on the edges or small feathers that can be hidden under a prong. Stones graded with an I indicate that there are inclusions and imperfections visible to the naked eye of an untrained person. Our favorite diamonds are graded Near Colorless or higher and eye-clean SI1 or higher-with a killer cut of course!
8. Diamond has a high refractive index (that’s why they throw rainbows, or technically, have so much potential for spectral color), but they don’t actually have the highest refractive index. Cubic Zirconia, the man-made diamond simulant, and Zircon, the naturally occurring mineral, both have a higher ‘rainbow potential’ than diamond. But both have their drawbacks as well; zircon is slightly brittle and cz is…well, it’s not a natural stone. So diamond is a perfect combination of high performance and high durability, which makes diamonds a great choice for an engagement ring.
9. Diamonds come in lots of colors! The very rare colors, pinks, blues, oranges, purples, reds, and greens, are very expensive. But the more common colors, like champagne, yellows, silvers, and irradiated teal blues, can be similar to white diamonds.
10. Diamonds are not formed in the ice. Seriously. Logan was once told that an unnamed mall jewelry store’s diamonds were the best diamonds in the world! Their diamonds were harder than other diamonds (um, if they are harder, they aren’t diamond anymore are they?) because they were formed deep in the ice of Russia. Nope. Diamonds are formed in heat, really high heat, like volcanos. To find a diamond source you trust, with an educated staff, and hopefully a GG on site. Evaluating diamonds requires almost a second language; educating clients about the ins and outs of diamonds is a passion of ours. We have all the equipment on-site and the technical know-how to use it to help you identify diamonds that are not only great performers but excellent purchases. Because the lowest price per carat is often not the best deal you’ll get a stone that is heavy for its face-up size or a poorly done recut. So if you want to delve into the nitty-gritty of diamonds, come see us-we’re happy to break it all down and talk measurement numbers, table and depth percentages, facet patterns, inclusion placement. If you don’t want to delve into the nitty-gritty, come see us anyway because we’ve already done all the work for you and we know we have a perfect diamond for you!
