Four C's of Diamond – Must Know Before Buying

Harry Seo
Since ancient time, jewelry has been loved by women across the globe. Since ages, various ornaments made of gold, silver, brass, copper, bones, horns and other materials are being used as decorative items to add grace to the personality of the wearer.

Prior, gold jewelry was mostly preferred by the women to match up with their traditional attires but in modern times, due to changes in lifestyle of woman, gold is gradually being replaced by diamond. Diamond jewelry provides sophisticated look as well as enhances the persona of women.

The most striking feature of diamond jewelry is that these can be worn with any kind of attire such as casuals, formals, traditional and so forth. Besides this, it adds the value in the woman's style and status. This is the main reason that diamond jewelry has become the most favored choice of today's fashion conscious women

Now, to buy right diamond, people should know about some necessary parameters.

There are some attributes which work in sync to form an overall appearance of a diamond and these include four C's. These four C's – Cut, Carat, Color and Clarity let people know about the quality, standards and price of a particular diamond.

The classification of Four C's of diamond are discussed below:

COLOR

A colorless diamond is the most sought-after among others as it is valuable and sparkling. A pure crystal-white diamond permits more light to penetrate through it and emits more sparkle(scintilation) and fire (dispersion of light into the colors of the spectrum), which is why colorless or white diamonds are more expensive than colored diamonds. People can avail colored diamonds or fancy diamonds also in shades of blue, green, yellow, pink, red and black but some colored diamonds are rare to find and hence can be very expensive.

The color and grade of a diamond can be determined by observing GIA's professional color scale in which shades are arranged from D to Z, where D signifies the pure whiteness and Z signifies bright yellow.


This GIA's professional scale can't be used for determining the grade of colored diamonds as these have many other chemical components in their composition. For Example, a blue diamond has the composition of titanium and steel, red color in a diamond is due to the presence of chromium and so forth. Now-a-days, in order to make fancy diamonds, many diamond jewelery manufacturers are using artificial methods such as burning, and radiation method. By practicing these, various colors can be obtained from a white diamond like blue, green, red and so on.

CARAT

A carat is standard which defines weight of a diamond, with one carat equaling 200mg of actual weight. Diamonds, which are less than 1 Carat are measured in 'points' by dividing the carat value with 100 points for example, ¾ carat will be measured as 0.75( ¾ / 100) points. Sometimes, people think that more is the weight, larger will be the diamond's size but, in reality, weight of a diamond does not co-relates with its size. A small diamond can have more weight as compared to a large sized diamond.

CUT


Cut is the most important factor among four C's as it determines the three attributes of a diamond - Fire, Brilliance and Scintillation. Here, Fire signifies the dispersion of light into the colors of the spectrum, Brilliance means the amount of light that is being reflected from diamond and Scintillation depicts the flashes of light when a diamond is moved. These three factors are used to evaluate the purity, beauty and value of a diamond.

Diamond's Cut is generally based on three factors that include proportions, symmetry and polish. These three factors are discussed below:

a) Proportions

A Diamond's proportion allude to the relationship between a table size (top) of a diamond, structure profundity, and angle. By considering these three parameters, a diamond can be cut in three forms viz. Well cut (“an ideal cut”), deep cut and shallow cut. A well cut permit light to reflect from one facet to another and then permits that light to scatter from the diamond's top. In a deep cut diamond, light penetrates from one facet and then escapes through the opposite facet whereas in shallow cut, light does not gets reflected at all.

Diamond's Proportion

b) Symmetry
The symmetry of a diamond specifies that how precisely the opposite facet has been put and shaped. Diamond which has undesired facet shape along with improper Culet (bottom point) and table, is not considered as a perfect diamond. In a well cut diamond, facets are placed as mirror images of each other.

c) Polish

Polish signifies the smooth surface of a diamond.

Diamond cuts are found in different shapes including Round shape (the most sought-after shape), Princess (square shaped), Emerald, Cushion, Oval, Pear, Radiant, Heart, Asscher and Marquise.


CLARITY

Clarity shows the quality of a diamond which further relates with its visual appearance. Though diamond is found under the earth crust, it often contains some defects /impurity either internally or externally.

Internal defects also known as inclusions in a diamond may have internal grading, knots, bearding, feathers etc. and external defects or blemishes depicts the surface imperfections such as scratches, polish lines, nicks, pits, chips and so forth. For determining inclusions, the clarity scale of a diamond is divided into six categories – Flawless, VVS1-2, VS1-2, SI1-2, I1, I2-3 which depicts inclusion free, very very small inclusions, very small inclusions, small inclusions and imperfect respectively. All these can be visualized under 10 times magnification.


By understanding all these criteria, buyers can confidently purchase the diamond jewelry such as wedding sets, rings, bracelets, necklace and much more with its brilliance, style and meaning.

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