Diamond Engagement Rings

Formed deep beneath the earth’s surface and composed of one single element, carbon, diamonds are created under high pressure and temperature conditions in the earth’s mantle. Most of today’s mined diamonds come from a specific geological formation called a kimberlite pipe, which is a volcanic pipe formed in the earth’s mantle, by a deep source volcanic eruption.

Diamonds are formed deep in the earth’s mantle, around 100 miles down, in what we would call the ‘diamond stability zone’. Some are found much further down in the mantle’s transition zone, around 400 miles down. In the industry, we would call a diamond from here a ‘superdeep diamond’. These diamonds are very precious, as they are regarded as time capsules, they hold valuable information of our planet’s past. During a volcanic eruption, diamonds amongst other rock are ejected towards the earth’s surface to be unearthed by miners. The rough diamond is then cleaved, cut, and polished to its perfect state ready to be sold.

In the last century, a new method of harvesting diamonds was formed, which now is beginning to have a profound affect on the diamond industry. Lab-grown diamonds are growing to be more popular, due to the alternative method used in creating the diamonds. In a chamber, pure graphite carbon is put under immense pressure in a lab in extreme heat, which creates a synthetic diamond. The diamond shares the exact same qualities as it’s mined counterpart, but instead of being created in the earth’s mantle it is created in a lab.

Diamond quality is measured by four quality characteristics named the 4 Cs-cut, clarity, color and carat weight. This grading system was created by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) and was designed to regulate the classification of diamond quality.

Cut

Cut grades are given only to round diamonds and refers to the balance of proportions achieved by the diamond cutter, not the diamond’s shape, as is commonly mistaken.

Ranging from excellent to poor, a cut grade combines three types of reflections-brilliance, fire and scintillation. For the greatest brilliance and fire, we recommend (and typically only offer) ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’ cut grades for round diamonds, which essentially guarantees a sparkly appearance.
Over 92% of our customers choose an excellent cut grade round diamond.

While they’re forming in the earth, diamonds develop natural birthmarks – slight irregularities and features that are visible to a skilled grader under 10x magnification. These are often referred to as ‘clarity characteristics’ and may or may not be visible to the naked eye depending on size, quantity, placement or color.

To ensure the brilliance and fire that makes diamonds so enchanting, we offer ‘SI1″ clarity grades and above. In fact, each diamond is inspected to ensure that any clarity characteristics shouldn’t be visible to the naked eye.

The most frequently selected clarity grade is VS1 (very slightly included), closely followed by VVS2 (very very slightly included), VS2 (very slightly included) and VVS1(very very slightly included). Each of these clarity grades are excellent choices that are eye clean, meaning they won’t have inclusions visible to the naked eye. An ‘internally flawless’ (FL) diamond is very rare, less than 1% of all diamonds are graded as internally flawless.

A diamond’s color usually refers to the level of color in a white diamond. This grading system was invented to evaluate the amount of color, or yellow tint, that is in a diamond. Diamond color can also refer to different fancy colors, such as pink, blue or yellow diamonds. However, since fancy colors are quite rare, the white diamond has its own color grading system. The white diamond is graded from D (colorless) to Z (light yellow).

The most popular diamond color is F, closely followed by E and G. E and F colors are in the colorless category while G is in the near colorless category – all diamonds in the colorless and near colorless category would appear bright and white in appearance.