She has really small hands so hopefully she’ll think a smaller stone is fine so I can go all out on how brilliant and shiny it is but that depends on this weekend when we look. She wants a simple setting so that won’t be terribly expensive but I want to make sure the stone is as good as possible.
I’d like to stay under 5K for the whole diamond plus ring but that largely depends on the size my girlfriend wants and I’m willing to go over it. I don’t care too much about clarity and color so long as it’s eyeclean and I can’t see any coloring myself. I know for sure that I want a GIA triple EX or an AGS 0, but I keep seeing people on here say that isn’t enough to determine how the light will look. I have been doing my own independent research, on here, other diamond sites, Reddit, and at retail jewelers. Starting here is going to give you a large head start in making an informed choice. However, in bright jewelry store lighting the 1 carat actually looks okay, until you put any kind of a shadow over it and its true character shows its unattractive face. The 0.80 ct stone not only looks bigger than the 1,00 ct diamond, it sparkles like crazy while the 1 carat just lets the light leak through all over the place. Garry Holloway, known here as Cut Nut, put together this cut demonstration. Most importantly, ask to see diamonds of differing cut qualities side by side to see the differences for yourself. If, and I hope this does not happen, he downplays the importance of cut and the knowledge needed to share that importance, then he is not keeping up with the trade and you may wish to consider other options. He will be able to lead you to a wize choice. If he has kept up with the new things that have been learned by scientific research into light behavior in a diamond, and is excited to share them with you, then you most likely are dealing with a dealer who has kept up with his education in his chosen trade and knows what he is talking about. When you visit the jeweler, ask him about some of the things you have learned here. May I suggest that you spend some time on this site researching what you will want to know to pick a great diamond. a State University: both are very impressive, and in a lot of ways they are comparable, but one of them (arguably arbitrarily) carries more weight than the other.Ask our PriceScope members and industry experts for a second opinion or get lost in the thousands of user-shared diamond and jewelry images for inspiration. It is the difference between earning a 4.0 GPA from an Ivy League vs. Lab reports are not appraisals, they're simply report cards. Does this mean a gem graded by the IGI isn't worth as much as a GIA graded diamond? Of course not. how can you be sure your I-color diamond is the same color as every other I-color diamond regardless of fluorescence or clarity? Is there a chance your "excellent" cut diamond is actually a "good" cut and you're overpaying by a lot? The GIA is trusted by every jeweler and diamond expert to consistently grade diamonds every time. Consistency is the primary concern when looking at lab reports, and the GIA is considered the most rigid and consistent of all diamond grading labs. There are a number of studies comparing different labs' reports of the same diamond, some of them say that they're all mostly comparable while others say there are clear standouts, but one thing is for sure: GIA is the industry-standard.