Should you be interested in buying a diamond for an engagement ring or otherwise, you should be aware of some of the important characteristics of diamonds to know the quality of your purchase.

Buying of diamonds doesn’t really involve much of negotiations. The parameters, and hence the quality and price for judging the quality of diamond, are its 5c’s.

This is how to proceed with the inspecting and purchase of a diamond:

1. First of all you need a couple of things for inspecting a diamond. The most important is the report from Gemological Institute of America (or GIA), which should accompany every diamond.

Though there are other institutes too for evaluation of diamonds, GIA is the most recognized internationally for its consistency. The other item needed for your inspection is a magnifying glass of 10Xeye specification.

2. Check the GIA certificate of the diamond under question. The availability of this certificate is a confirmation that it’s an authentic diamond and not the man-made variety.

It’s worthwhile getting this certificate inspected by a certified jeweler to confirm that the diamond and the report tally.

3. The first ‘C’ is the carat or weight of the diamond, which is noted in the certificate.  One carat equals 1/5 of a gram. So, the larger the carat the bigger is the diamond. Further, each carat has 100 “points”, and each point means 1% of a carat. Thus a 75-point diamond is a .75-carat diamond.

4. The other ‘C’ is the clarity of the diamond mentioned in the GIA report of the diamond. Clarity pertains to internal impurities or inclusions and external blemishes. There are eleven grades for measuring the clarity of a diamond, varying from I3 (imperfect 3) to FL (flawless).

Usually, diamonds fall in the range of SI or VS category, signifying slight inclusion or very slight inclusion. The price of a diamond is inversely proportion to its internal inclusions or external blemishes, that is the more the impurities, the less the price. A small dark speck within the diamond forms an inclusion.

Now comes the time to use your loupe to examine the diamond and see if there are any imperfections. Check if they match with those reported in the GIA report that shows the diagrams of its bottom and top.

The location of each imperfection is circled in red. At the bottom you’ll find a key to the symbols used for representing imperfections, like crystal, cloud and feather etc. You should not expect a diamond to be totally devoid of imperfections, though you can’t see them thru naked eye.

5. Now you check the color of the diamond. The GIA report grades the color from D, representing utmost white to Z, meaning very yellow. As you go up the color grade, the price of diamond increases.

The report starts grading from ‘colorless’ and goes down to ‘light’. It’s good to buy something in the range of “near colorless’ to ‘colorless’ for engagement ring.

6.  And at last, we come to the 5th C, which is the cut of the diamond. Cut doesn’t refer to the shape of the diamond. Shape means the overall shape like being round or pillow shaped. Cut here refers to how well the shape is cut and is the only characteristic of the diamond that humans can control.

The GIA classifies cut from poor to excellent, with three levels falling in between. When buying a diamond for an engagement ring, it’s good to have one that falls in good to higher range.

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