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).
1.32 Carat Diamonds
Diamond carats, points and normal units of milligrams can all be converted between - this 1.32 carat diamond for example weighs 264 mg. The width of a diamond with a weight of 1.32 carats is about 7.17 mm.
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1.32 carats doesn't always get you a diamond which is precisely 7.17 mm in width - because the diamond could have been cut in different ways, it may have a different width.
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. Walk into a diamond shop and wait around, and sooner or later you'll hear someone getting confused or frustrated about the fact that the carat weight of a diamond and the width of the diamond are very different things - most likely they will be confused or frustrated because a diamond with double the carat weight is only a little bit wider.
Diamond carat size doesn't narrow down your list of diamonds very much, what you really need to do is consider what the other desirable properties of the diamond, decide how good these properties have to be for your situation, and then search for diamonds which meet all of these property requirements at the same time. Although it is not a problem for most people, it is possible for a diamond to be too large. This is much more likely to happen with women who have particularly petite hands.
A shop assistant may show you a one carat diamond and a one carat emerald stone next to each other, and point out how much larger the emerald stone is. This is because emerald is a much lighter material, so for a given weight of it, it will appear much bigger than for an equivalent sized diamond. First-time diamond buyers who are in a hurry often just focus on the diamond carat size, which is a big mistake - other properties such as the clarity of the diamond are important in getting a diamond which is attractive not just in terms of its size, but also its appearance.
Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs. Malcolm S. Forbes .
