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).
1.81 Carat Diamonds
If you're interested in the normal metric weight of a 1.81 carat diamond, it is 362 mg.
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The cost per carat value is a numerical number that provides you with a sense of how much the diamond is worth compared to other diamonds of similar properties.
Be careful of assigning too much importance to the carat weight of the diamond while neglecting other properties such as the girdle thickness, which is to wide can make the diamond appear smaller than other diamonds of the same carat weight.
Counter intuitively, a diamond that is twice as heavy as another diamond is a lot less than twice as big in terms of its diameter. 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.
In the age of acorns, before the times of Ceres, a single barley-corn had been of more value to mankind than all the diamonds of the mines of India. Henry Brooke .
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. Don't mix up carat weights of single diamonds with total diamond weights - the mean very different things and mixing them up can trick you when you're considering different prices.
So how good do you think a 10 carat diamond which looks a horrible uneven black colour would appear on an engagement ring? Exactly - diamond buyers need to also consider other properties such as the colour of the stone, which is not picked correctly can negate any attractiveness of having a very large diamond.