Quick and Easy Buying Guide
Carat weight: 1 carat = 200 milligrams = 6.5 mm diameter. Doubling weight doesn't double diameter.
Diamond clarity: FL/IF/VVS/VS = super expensive, near perfect. SI = best value if you can check a photo for obvious inclusions (defects).
Color: D-G = colorless, expensive, only if you have money to burn. H-J = best value. Can go lower in gold metal settings than white metal.
Cut: Better cut ratings let more light into a diamond, making it sparkle more. Very important property, don't skimp here.
Set a budget and minimum cut (Premium). Go J color for gold and I/H for white metals. Go searching for SI1/SI2 clarity diamonds at James Allen. Pick a diamond with small/no inclusions. Choose a ring setting and buy it risk-free (60-day returns).
2.99 Carat Diamonds
To convert the weight of this diamond in carats to milligrams, you multiply the number of carats by 200, in this case multiplying 2.99 carats by 200 to get 598 mg. Diamonds that weigh 2.99 carats are typically 9.45 mm across their widest part.
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What many people don't realise is that a 9.45 mm wide diamond can be a range of weights, not just exactly 5 carats, because the diamond can vary in depth.
If you like playing with numbers, one analysis method you can use for examining diamonds is to divide the cost of the diamond by the number of carats to get the cost per carat metric. Because diamonds with the carat weight of one or two carats are very very popular, it's common for shops and online stores to raise the prices. You can save money by looking for diamonds which don't have the sizes.
In the age of acorns, before the times of Ceres, a single barley-corn had been of more value to mankind than all the diamonds of the mines of India. Henry Brooke .
Many men when shopping for a diamond engagement ring will look at how big the diamond looks in comparison to their own hand, when they really should be looking at how big the diamond looks in comparison to a female shop assistant's hand who has a hand similar in size to their prospective fiance.
A shop assistant may show you a one carat diamond and a one carat emerald stone next to each other, and point out how much larger the emerald stone is. This is because emerald is a much lighter material, so for a given weight of it, it will appear much bigger than for an equivalent sized diamond.
Sometimes diamond searchers will switch to coloured diamonds in a quest to perhaps get a slightly larger stone, although coloured diamonds are not always cheaper than white diamonds. Huge coloured diamonds do exist, such as the red cross diamond, a 205 carat yellow diamond.
So how good do you think a 10 carat diamond which looks a horrible uneven black colour would appear on an engagement ring? Exactly - diamond buyers need to also consider other properties such as the colour of the stone, which is not picked correctly can negate any attractiveness of having a very large diamond.