Diamond Cut: Elevating the Brilliance of Your Gem

The dazzling brilliance of a diamond has mesmerised fine jewellery lovers for centuries. The clear, crisp sparkle of this beautiful gemstone holds endless appeal and is an enduring favourite to celebrate love, commitment and significance.

The diamond specialists at Charles Rose understand that choosing the perfect diamond is a personal journey. So, to make your decision easier, we have provided some key criteria to consider before making this all-important purchase.

A diamond’s quality is determined by a universal diamond grading standard known as the four Cs (4Cs): Cut, Colour, Clarity and Carat weight.

These four qualities together not only determine the aesthetic appeal and beauty of your diamond but also its value.

All 4Cs are essential elements that you should weigh up before purchasing a diamond, but diamond specialists agree that a high-quality diamond cut is the most important of all diamond characteristics.

This is because a diamond’s spectacular sparkle is mostly influenced by the cut.

The Crucial Role Of The Diamond Cut

Diamonds are rough, unpolished gems that need to be cut to reveal their exquisite inner beauty. If you examine a fine diamond, you will notice that the stone features many surfaces or facets.

Importantly, it is the positioning and angle of these facets that determine the diamond’s sparkle.

Although most people believe that cut refers to diamond shapes or cut styles alone (for example, round, princess, pear, and oval styles), diamond cut actually refers to the delicate balance of proportion, symmetry and polish.

These factors dramatically impact how the surrounding light scatters and interacts with a diamond’s surface, affecting its appearance in three distinct ways:

• Brilliance, or brightness, refers to the white light that reflects off a diamond – this reflection is the bright, colourless white flashes we see when a diamond catches the light.

• Fire refers to how a diamond disperses light – this dispersion is what we perceive as beautiful rainbow-coloured flashes.

• Scintillation refers to the blinking light and dark facet-to-facet flashes we see when the stone moves – better known as sparkle.

Diamantaires have an intimate understanding of how light reflects and disperses off a stone’s surface. This has enabled these skilled jewellers to master the technique of cutting and polishing a diamond’s surface to ensure spectacular symmetry and precise proportion. This dramatically enhances and maximises the diamond’s ability to reflect and disperse light, optimising the stunning sparkle that we desire when choosing a diamond jewellery piece. 

The Importance of Diamond Structure

The cut quality of a diamond is further determined by its characteristics. Below is a quick overview of a diamond’s structure:

• Table: The flat surface at the top of a diamond.

• Crown: The portion of the diamond from table to girdle.

• Girdle: The narrow rim around the diamond’s widest part between the crown and pavilion. This rim, or setting edge, is used to hold a diamond in place when set in jewellery.

• Pavilion: The lower girdle to culet portion of the diamond.

• Culet: The point at the base of the diamond’s pavilion, where the pavilion’s facets meet.

These characteristics not only define the diamond shape but when well-proportioned and polished to perfection, beautifully combine to increase light reflection to create the delightful dazzle and spectacular sparkle for which this gorgeous gemstone is universally renowned.

What Is A Diamond Shape

The shape of a diamond has are typically categorised into two separate but distinct groups: round diamonds and fancy shape diamonds. Round brilliant diamonds are the much more traditional diamond shape that you think of when you think of diamonds. While fancy shape diamonds are more varied. These fancy shape diamonds can include marquise cut diamonds, oval diamonds, heart diamonds etc.

Finding Your Ideal Cut: Diamond Cut Chart

A well-cut diamond often appears larger and more sparkly and prismatic than a stone that is not cut well, even if they are the same carat weight. This is because a poorly cut diamond lacks symmetry, proportion and brightness, ruining its inherent beauty.

By considering all factors impacting a diamond’s appearance, from facet shapes and culet size to girdle width, symmetry and polish, gemologists have developed an international grading system to assign grades to every diamond.

This grading system helps you understand and evaluate the quality of the stone you are purchasing.

Diamond cut quality is graded as Ideal/Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair or Poor. Our helpful diamond cut grade chart below can give you a clearer understanding of these diamond cuts.

Excellent/ Ideal	Excellent/Ideal cut diamonds are exquisite. They reflect almost all the light entering the diamond, optimally providing maximum fire, brilliance and scintillating sparkle. These diamond cuts are the top 3% of diamond quality.
Very Good	Very Good cut graded diamonds are a superior quality cut, offering similar brilliance and fire as Ideal/Excellent grade stones given they reflect nearly as much light through the diamond’s table. These diamond cuts represent the top 15% of diamond quality.
Good	Good cut diamonds reflect less light than the higher grades, so the increase in brilliance, fire and scintillation offered by Excellent/Ideal and Very Good diamond cuts is very noticeable when compared to a Good diamond cut. Charles Rose does not sell "Good" graded diamond cuts.
Fair	Fair cut graded diamonds offer little brilliance, as much of the light does not reflect through the diamond’s table but escapes through the bottom and sides of the stone. Charles Rose does not sell "Fair" graded diamond cuts.
Poor	Poor cut diamonds are of low quality, providing little to no brilliance, fire or scintillation. Charles Rose does not sell "Poor" graded diamond cuts.

 

The Charles Rose Diamond Cut Standard

Charles Rose does not sell diamonds with a cut grade of “Good” or below because they do not meet our high-quality standards, which are stricter than all our domestic and international competitors. We specialise in the supply of Excellent/Ideal cut diamonds, ensuring finer value in your purchase.

You can rest assured that every Charles Rose diamond is carefully selected by our expert diamantaires to guarantee consistently high quality, ensuring maximum scintillation, brilliance and fire.

Charles Rose diamonds come with a premium International diamond grading certification plus a full warranty. Discover more about the Charles Rose difference.

As Australia’s premier diamond jewellery designer and manufacturer, we offer a finished range in addition to an exclusive made to order jewellery service second to none.

Arrange an appointment with one of our expert diamantaires to discuss your diamond jewellery preferences. Our Melbourne and Geelong showrooms carry a gorgeous range of readymade and bespoke pieces – everlasting expressions of love and commitment.

Your journey to the perfect diamond begins here.

Experience the Charles Rose difference for yourself and embrace the confidence of owning a truly exceptional diamond.

 

Authored by Marcus Rose, third-generation custodian of Charles Rose Jewellers' legacy since 1995. Upholding the founders' values of superior quality and unparalleled beauty, Marcus ensures every meticulously crafted piece tells its own unique, enchanting story.

 

 

Hear what some of our customers had to say about the quality and value of our diamonds:

"Gorgeous diamonds for incredible value. The staff whom we have dealt with for my engagement ring and our wedding rings went over and above to ensure that we are 100% satisfied with our purchase, whilst being incredibly patient during the process. We found that The Charles Rose diamonds and jewellery are exquisite & we will not be going anywhere else!” - Samantha Hommelhoff

“The customer service is great. There is no pressure and the staff are really helpful. My wife loves diamonds and this is the place” - John Atherton