Sooner or later, you are going to be faced with the task of buying diamond jewelry for someone close to you. The first time you walk into a jewelry store can be seriously intimidating. Understanding what to look for can make a world of difference.
The first step in coming to grips with diamond shopping is understanding what a diamond is. The simplest explanation is it is a piece of carbon. That carbon has been heated and pressurize for thousands of years and the result is a diamond.
The diamonds you see in the jewelry store have nothing in common with what comes out of the ground. Diamonds found in nature are random shapes and much larger. A jeweler will then cut them to shape and buff them out so they can be used as jewelry.
It is also important to note that most diamonds do not end up as jewels. They are simply of poor quality or the wrong shape. These diamonds usually end up in an industrial capacity. Since diamonds are so hard, they are used in drill bits and such.
So, what does this have to do with buying diamonds? Well, you need to know how diamonds come about to understand why you should follow the four Cs when buying a diamond. The four Cs are clarity, cut, carat weight and color.
Clarity is perhaps the easiest to understand. It refers to the brilliance of the diamond. This means the ability of the diamond to pass light. Diamonds get their brilliance by their ability to reflect light around their prism. This is why clarity is important.
Cut refers to the reflectivity of the diamond. A diamond has certain traits and only a good cut can bring them out. A good cut is one in which light enters one side of the top of the diamond, reflects across the bottom and back out the other side.
A good cut makes a diamond sparkle. This sparkle comes from the reflecting light. Importantly, cut does not refer to the shape of the diamond. The shape is just an aesthetic issue. Cut is all about how the light reflects through the diamond.
When it comes to diamonds, nothing is what it seems. Our fourth C, color, does not refer to the color of the diamond. It refers to how clear the diamond is. If diamonds have a yellowish tint, they are considered to have bad color.
Our final C is carat weight. The name refers to carob seeds that were used in ancient times to measure small weights. Unlike most things, you will be better off buying by the quality of the cut, color and clarity than by mere size alone.
The problem with buying big diamonds is any imperfection is magnified and far easier to see than with smaller diamonds. In general, buy as large a G grade diamond with a good cut as you can afford. You should get something really nice.