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).
2.20 Carat Diamonds
When you see a 2.20 carat diamond, expect to see about 8.52 mm worth of diamond.
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Kissing your hand may make you feel very good, but a diamond lasts forever. Anita Loos .
Some online retailers provide, amongst other diamond properties, a property called the cost per carat, which gives consumers another way of thinking about the value of a diamond. The girdle thickness of the diamond plays an important role in determining the apparent size of the diamond - a diamond with an unnecessarily thick girdle will appear smaller than a diamond with a thinner girdle.
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. 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.
You can trade carat size for diamond rarity by doing something like choosing a pink diamond. If you do this, perhaps you'd like to consider putting in a bid for the darya-ye noor diamond which is the largest pink diamond the world, or 182 carats of it. To get it, you'd have to go to iran however.. A large diamond which has a huge crack down the middle, or alternatively a big yucky looking inclusion, is not a good look - it looks like someone has gone for size and sacrificed all the other desirable properties of the diamond. Clarity, for example, can be just as important in picking a diamond.