Diamond Guide

Understanding The 4 C's.

We understand how difficult it can be when it comes to purchasing the perfect diamond.  Take a look at our guide below explaining the cut, colour, clarity and carat of a diamond. This should help you in making the right purchase to suit your budget.


The cut dramatically influences the diamonds fiery light - it is the proportions of the cut and the skill of the polisher that determine whether it's full beauty is realised.  The shape is a matter of personal taste, the most popular is the round brilliant.  Other shapes include the emerald, pear, marquise, princess, oval and heart.


The closer a diamond is to colourless, the rarer and more valuable the stone.  Diamonds with a strong pure colour are extremely rare and called fancies.  These can be found in a rainbow of colours from Green and Blues through to Yellow, Red and Orange.  The GIA grades colours from D (known as exceptional white on the CIBJO scale) through to Z, known as tinted colour.



Almost all diamonds contain small inclusions - many are so small they cannot be seen by the naked eye.  These are nature's fingerprints and make every diamond unique.  But the fewer they are, the rarer and more valuable the stone.  Clarity is the term used to indicate the extent to which a diamond is free of these inclusions under a 10 times magnification.  There are three major grading systems for classifying diamonds:  GIA, HRD and CIBJO.  Currently a stone is termed flawless by the GIA if it has no surface characteristics or internal inclusions.  It is also deemed internally flawless if it has minor surface characteristics.



As with all precious stones, the weight of the diamond is expressed in carats (originating from a naturally occurring unit of weight: the seed of the carob tree).  Diamonds were traditionally weighed against the seeds until the system was standardised and a carat is now fixed at 0.3 grams.  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.