Leah Ashley Jewelry Designs Creates Stunning Custom Jewelry

Anyone who has ever looked at buying a diamond has probably heard about the 4 C’s and probably also feels that because they think they understand the 4 C’s, they are an expert on buying diamonds.  I want to clarify the 4 C’s and explain the things that I feel get left out of the generic jewelry store explanation that are important to consumers.

The 4 C’s are generally explained as cut, carat, color, and clarity.  Today I want to dissect carat because I think it is probably the easiest to explain and understand, sort of.

Carat weight is simply the weight of any given stone.  The weight of a stone obviously is directly linked to how big it is so the bigger the number, the larger the stone.  Now, the carat weight of your stone is obviously not the only thing that contributes to the price(thus the other 3 C’s) but it is a big one.  The larger the stone, the larger the price tag.  The part of that idea that I feel gets overlooked is how much price increases with size.  Logic would say that if you can get a 1/2 carat diamond for $1,500, you should be able to get a 1 carat diamond for $3,000.  Not true at all unless you are seriously changing the other 3 C’s.  I don’t know the exact formula for how to price diamonds but I do know that the price increases exponentially as the size of a stone increases.

The reason for this increase has to do with the rarity of larger stones.  Again, I don’t know the actually statistics, but finding rough diamond material that is clean enough in a larger enough area to cut your larger carat weight stones, is much harder than finding the rough material to cut the small accent stones that you see everywhere.

How important is carat weight?  That is something every person has to decide for themselves.  If what you want is a huge diamond just to have a huge diamond, than that’s your taste.  I personally feel that the other 3 C’s can be more important that the actual carat weight of a stone because if you have a stone that doesn’t have good cut, color, or clarity, the stone isn’t going to look very good regardless of how big it is.

The chart below shows how big different diamond carat weights are (if they meet cut standards) if the diamonds are a round brilliant cut.  Please look at the millimeter sizes rather than assuming the chart is the correct size on your computer screen.