written by Brooklyn
Why Diamond Cut Determines Size
So here we are again but this time we’ll be diving into cut. Cut is actually the most important factor out of the diamond 4 C’s and for good reason. How your diamond is cut is really going to determine two things.
# 1- Cut determines how light shines through your stone.
# 2- Cut has the biggest impact on how small or how big your diamond is going to look.
It actually has a much bigger impact than carat on the size of your stone.
Let’s take a look at these three stones.
Do they look different in size? All three stones are one Carat. This has to do with proportions.
These three stones look different because they’re proportioned differently. To summarize, cut is really just about proportions. So to help you understand a bit more, we did some arts and crafts at the studio and created a little homemade tool to illustrate cuts of a diamond.
So let’s say you have these three stones; each weights one carat each. But they are all proportioned differently.
There are two problems with that.
Take a look at the first one.
Most of the weight is in the height of this diamond; Face up, it looks a lot smaller. This is why there could be a scenario where someone gets engaged, tells all her friends it’s a one carat, but one of her friends might be like, “hey, mine’s a .7ct”. They both take a look and the .7 ct diamond looks bigger. We must remember that carat has nothing to do with size.
Take a look at the second example.
With this one, the light goes into the stone, but it leaks out the side. This example illustrates that when most of the light is leaking out the side of the diamond, it’s not going to shine that well.
You might not notice this in a jewelry store because the lighting is super intense. It’s very strategic.
Everything looks crazy bright in that setting but if you take a diamond like this and you open up the box at home, you’re going to notice it does not look as bright as it did back in this store.
On the flip side, you want to stay away from the opposite extreme -the pancake effect from the top down. This can make the stone look bigger, but the light leaks out the bottom of the stone. This makes the diamond look kind of like watery or like glass like in the middle of a stone.
Now, take a look. When a diamond is cut to premium proportions, light goes in the diamond through the diamond and back out. Nothing sparkles like a premium cut diamond.
So where do we end off?
When it comes to color and clarity, you can definitely personalize what works best for you. But when it comes to cut, having the perfect cut is a non-negotiable. You have to go to the top.
A perfectly cut diamond reflects more light and as a result a perfectly cut diamond will make your color go up in value. With cut, the quality of the cut affects all areas of the diamond.
You want to perfectly cut diamond because the cut is going to have a trickle down effect on everything else.
The final take away: Don’t settle for anything less when it comes to cut.
