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).
1.29 Carat Diamonds
Diamond carats, points and normal units of milligrams can all be converted between - this 1.29 carat diamond for example weighs 258 mg. Searching for diamonds will often reveal many possible candidates and one way to help differentiate among them is to work out the costs per carat value for each diamond.
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The width of the diamond grows much more slowly than the carat weight of a diamond. One trick for saving money when buying a diamond is to choose a diamond which has a carat weight just below a popular number, such as buying a 0.98 carat diamond instead of a one carat diamond.
There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa. William Makepeace Thackeray .
For prospective buyers who are really focused on the size of a stone but not the material or quality, consider changing to a different gemstone apart from diamond. Some other gemstones are significantly less dense than diamond, which means for a certain carat weight they will have a larger volume and hence will look bigger to the naked eye. There are no firm statistics that are universally applicable, but it is generally agreed that the average size of a diamond is around a third of the carat, perhaps a little more.
In the quest for finding the largest diamond possible within a budget, it can be fun to consider famous large diamonds like ashberg diamond, which had a huge weight of 102 carats - about 200 times the mass of a diamond used in a typical engagement ring. Don't forget to think about other diamond characteristics such as diamond cut, which plays a critical role in determining the amount of light that gets into the diamond and the degree to which the diamond sparkles in light.