Find Your Perfect Diamond
Made to sit flush against the engagement ring it was designed for.
Every ring is made from start to finish in our Los Angeles atelier.
Cut, color, clarity, and carat were invented to grade diamonds, not to shop for them. Graded, they carry equal billing on the certificate. Shopped, they are nowhere near equal, and knowing the real hierarchy is worth more than any single grade on the paper.
Diamond cutting descends directly from the science of optics; the earliest cutters worked lenses and gems with the same hands, chasing the geometry that releases the light a rough crystal traps. The trade still uses the word cut loosely to mean shape, round or oval or emerald, but the cut grade on a certificate measures something far more consequential: how precisely the stone's proportions and angles were executed, and therefore how much light returns to your eye instead of leaking out the sides.
Every faceted diamond shares the same five-part anatomy, and the relationships between these parts are what a cut grade summarizes.
| Part | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Table | The flat plane on top of the stone; the window most light enters and exits through. |
| Crown | The faceted slope connecting the table to the stone's widest point; the source of fire. |
| Girdle | The thin band at the widest point, separating top from bottom; where the setting grips. |
| Pavilion | The faceted slope descending to the point; the mirror system that returns light to the eye. |
| Culet | The bottom point, often finished as a minute facet to protect the tip. |
Cut is where we refuse to negotiate, because it is where beauty is actually manufactured. The full geometry, angle by angle, lives in our ideal proportions guide.
Diamond is the only gem prized for having no color at all, so the color scale grades absence: D at the colorless top, descending through the alphabet as warmth deepens. The scale's open secret is that its distinctions are made face down against master stones, in the one position your diamond will never occupy again. Face up, adjacent grades collapse into twins, and tint becomes findable mostly through direct contrast with whiter stones.
That gap between how color is graded and how it is seen is where the smart color budget lands: white metals reward G and above, warm metals flatter H through K, and we hold K as our floor for center stones. The full board, grade by grade, is in our complete color guide.
Diamonds endure the longest and harshest formation of any gem, and nearly all carry identifying traces of it: minute crystals, feathers, and clouds the trade calls inclusions, mapped precisely on every certificate's plotting diagram. The scale runs from Flawless through the Included grades, but for a buyer it contains exactly one line that matters: the point past which nothing is visible to the unaided eye.
Above that line, additional grades buy rarer paper, not a more beautiful stone. Below it, savings come with verification homework, which is work we do stone by stone before anything reaches a recommendation. Every diamond we sell is eye clean, verified against the actual stone rather than assumed from the grade. The full scale, grade by grade, is in our complete clarity guide.
A carat is a unit of weight, one fifth of a gram, divided into one hundred points; a 141.75 carat diamond weighs exactly one ounce, which says everything about how concentrated this form of value is. Weight is not size: two stones of identical weight and shape can face up visibly different depending on how their mass is distributed, so dimensions deserve as much attention as the number on the certificate.
Carat is also where the market's psychology becomes your opportunity. Prices step up sharply at the milestone weights buyers celebrate, while face up appearance moves gradually, so a well cut stone just beneath a magic size looks essentially identical on a hand at a meaningfully lower tier. Full sizing tables and the honest math live in our carat and size guide.
The 4Cs describe a diamond. These three commitments describe how we select one.
Stones with craftsmanship defects do not reach our recommendations. Cut is where light performance is decided, and it is the standard we refuse to trade against the other Cs.
ROSI™ weighs the position and character of every clarity characteristic and removes stones whose flaws could show even when the grade suggests otherwise. A human eye then confirms it against the actual stone.
K is our published floor for center stones, and warmer grades are matched to metal and shape before we recommend them. Past that line, savings stop surviving the look.
Every stone we recommend is scored by ROSI™, our gemological intelligence, built by our gemologists, across all four Cs at once. Request a ROSI™ Score Report on any diamond, ours or anyone else’s.
The 4Cs were built to grade diamonds, not to shop for them.
Equal billing on a certificate is not equal claim on your budget. Cut earns its money everywhere, in every light, from every distance. Clarity earns it up to the eye clean line and not one grade past. Color earns it up to the point your metal stops showing it. Carat earns it last, and shops best just under the milestones. Buy in that order and every dollar lands somewhere the eye can find it; buy by the paper alone and the certificate will be the most impressive thing about the ring.
Found a diamond you are considering, here or anywhere else? Send the GIA or IGI certificate number and our gemological team returns its ROSI™ Score and a read of where it sits in the current market. Complimentary, within minutes.
Score a DiamondWhere stones of the same exact specifications are trading on the open market right now. You get a straight answer, even when the diamond is not ours.
John Anderson, our Lead Gemologist, balances cut, color, clarity, and carat against real budgets and real settings every day. Tell him what you are building and he will show you exactly where each dollar works hardest. The consultation is complimentary and there is no obligation.
1-800-779-1726