When it comes to buying diamonds and diamond jewellery, understanding the 4 C's is crucial to making an informed decision and knowing what you are buying. The 4 C's refer to the diamond's Cut, Colour, Clarity and Carat weight. Each of these factors contributes to the overall quality and cost or value of a diamond.
Cut: The cut of a diamond refers to its proportions, symmetry, and polish. A well cut diamond will reflect and refract light beautifully, resulting in a dazzling display of brilliance and fire as the light bounces through the prisms and facets and back in to your eyes. It's often forgotten about by buyers, but the cut is perhaps the most important of the 4 C's as it can greatly impact a diamond's visual appeal.
Colour: Diamonds are graded on a scale starting from D (colourless) to Z (light yellow or brown). The less colour in a diamond, the higher its value. However, some rare coloured diamonds that are not 'white', known as fancy diamonds, are prized for their unique hues. These can be vivid yellow, red, green, purple, orange, pink, blue and even black.
Clarity: Clarity measures the presence of inclusions or blemishes within the diamond. These occur in lab grown diamonds exactly as they do in mined diamonds. These natural imperfections can affect a diamond's brilliance and are graded on a scale from Flawless (no inclusions) to Included (imperfections visible to the naked eye). You can find out more about this in one of our separate blog posts.
Carat Weight: Carat weight simply refers to the size of the diamond. A larger carat weight generally means a higher price, but other factors such as cut, colour, and clarity also play a significant role in determining the diamond's value. A diamond could be huge, but if it has a low colour, bad inclusions and is cut badly, it might be worth less than a much smaller diamond with higher qualities.
At Ostara London we use D-F colour, VS clarity and Excellent cut diamonds in our jewellery, however, if you are looking to make some bespoke jewellery with different qualities, you only need to ask and we would be happy to make it for you. Ultimately, the beauty of a diamond is subjective, so finding the right combination of the 4 C's is a personal choice.
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