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.
A pillow-soft outline wrapped around serious fire. The cushion is the romantic's brilliant, older than the round itself, and the one shape where two stones with identical certificates can look like entirely different diamonds. Knowing which cushion you are looking at is the whole game.
The cushion is a brilliant cut set inside a softened square or rectangle: rounded corners, gently curved sides, and a facet arrangement descended from the old mine cuts that lit candlelit rooms for two centuries before the round brilliant existed. It carries some of the largest fire of any shape, the colored flashes that come from big facets breaking light into spectrum.
What the certificate will not tell you is which of two very different cushions you are holding. The trade splits the shape into chunky, often called antique style, with bold, distinct facets you can read from across the table, and crushed ice, whose smaller, needle-like facets dissolve into a glittering, watery sparkle with no readable pattern. Neither is graded better; they are different aesthetics wearing the same name, and the paperwork treats them identically.
That split is why the cushion demands video more than almost any shape. Two stones can share carat, color, clarity, and measurements and still belong to different families. The one you fall in love with in a photograph is a facet structure, not a set of specifications.
| Facets | Typically 58 to 64, brilliant style |
| Cut grading | No formal lab cut grade, evaluate by eye |
| Face-up size | Slightly smaller than a round of equal weight |
| Length to width | 1.00 to 1.10 square, 1.15 to 1.30 elongated |
| Relative price | Meaningfully below round per carat |
| Watch for | Chunky vs crushed ice facet character |
The cushion carries more of its weight in its belly than most shapes, so it faces up slightly smaller than a round of equal carat. What it gives back is fire: those deep pavilions and broad facets produce colored light no shallow shape can match. Buyers who want spread choose elongated ratios; buyers who want the classic pillow stay square.
| Carat Weight | Typical Measurements | How It Wears |
|---|---|---|
| 0.75 ct | 5.4 x 5.4 mm | A soft, refined square for delicate hands |
| 1.00 ct | 6.0 x 6.0 mm | The classic pillow, unmistakable in a halo |
| 1.50 ct | 6.9 x 6.9 mm | Substantial warmth without hard edges |
| 2.00 ct | 7.5 x 7.5 mm | Deep fire that reads across a room |
| 3.00 ct | 8.7 x 8.7 mm | An heirloom presence, antique in spirit |
Measurements are typical for well proportioned stones. Individual diamonds vary with their cutting.
With no lab cut grade and two facet families sharing one name, the certificate is only the opening chapter on a cushion. Here is where your attention belongs.
Settle the aesthetic question first, on video, before comparing prices. Chunky cushions show bold, readable facets and antique character; crushed ice shimmers like water with no pattern to follow. Prices overlap completely, so the choice is pure taste, and it is the choice everything else depends on.
The facet family, the fire, and any dark zones under the table only reveal themselves in motion. Insist on high resolution video of the specific stone, and watch it move slowly: strong cushions stay lively edge to edge, weak ones go glassy or dark in the center.
Crushed ice faceting hides inclusions superbly, so VS2 and eye clean SI grades are frequent smart buys. The cushion's open crown and deep body retain color more than a round, so hold color a touch higher: G or better in white metals, H to J in gold.
Every stone we recommend is scored by ROSI™, our gemological intelligence, built by our gemologists, and verified by a human eye before it reaches you. Request a ROSI™ Score Report on any diamond you are considering, ours or anyone else’s.
Found a cushion 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.
The cushion's soft geometry pairs naturally with both vintage romance and clean modern lines. These three directions cover most of what our clients choose, each made to order around your exact stone.
The setting that made the modern cushion famous. A frame of pavé diamonds amplifies the pillow outline, adds face-up presence, and leans the whole ring toward heirloom glamour.
Four prongs and a clean band let the cushion's own character carry the ring. The choice for buyers who picked their stone for its facet pattern and want nothing competing with it.
A cushion flanked by side stones, tapered baguettes for an antique voice or pear shapes for softness. Past, present, and future in a shape that predates them all.
Two cushions with identical certificates can be entirely different diamonds. The paperwork will never warn you.
The cushion's chunky and crushed ice families share one name, one grading vocabulary, and almost nothing else in how they look on a hand. A buyer who orders from specifications alone has left the most important decision to chance. That is the honest cost of a shape with this much romance and this little standardization, and it comes with real compensations: cushion rough is used efficiently, so the shape is priced meaningfully below the round, its fire is arguably the best in diamonds, and its clarity forgiveness lets budgets stretch. Choose from video, decide your facet family first, and the cushion rewards you like no other shape. Order blind and you are flipping a beautiful coin.
We are a Los Angeles fine jewelry atelier with family roots in the diamond trade going back to 1967. That history buys you four things you will not find together anywhere else.
Send us the certificate of a stone we do not sell and we will still score it. No other jeweler will grade a competitor’s diamond for you and tell you if it is the better buy.
Every ROSI™ report shows where stones of identical specifications are trading right now, drawn from live market data. You see the range before you see our price.
Every score is verified by our gemological team before it reaches you, and John Anderson, our Lead Gemologist, is one phone call away for the questions a report cannot answer.
Every setting leaves our Los Angeles atelier built around your exact diamond, at one confident price, with 40 day returns and 60 day complimentary resizing behind it.
Our gemologists buy inside a written window, and decline outside it. These are those numbers, published in full, so you can hold any cushion to the same standard we do, including one you are considering somewhere else.
The cushion is the one shape in our window where a very small culet is acceptable. Anything larger reads as a visible dot through the table.
Each scale shows the measurement range. Gold marks the RockHer Ideal window.
| Length to width ratio | 1 to 1.1 |
|---|---|
| Depth | 59% to 65% |
| Table | 55% to 65% |
| Girdle | Thin to thick |
| Polish | Very Good or better |
| Symmetry | Good or better |
| Culet | None to very small |
Every diamond in our search carries these measurements on its report. In the filter panel, under RockHer’s Best, switch on Ideal Cut and the results narrow to the window above. Super Ideal Cut narrows them further still, to a tighter standard our gemologists hold diamond by diamond rather than publish as a range.
Nothing is hidden behind the switch. It applies the same numbers printed on this page.
Open the Cushion diamond searchThe panel as it appears in the diamond search, with Ideal Cut switched on.
Proportion is the first filter, not the last. A cushion can sit inside every range above and still be one we will not sell. These findings end a purchase in our office whatever the certificate says, and every diamond scored by ROSI™ is read against them by a gemologist before it is offered.
A certificate tells you what was measured. It does not tell you what was rejected.
Two cushion diamonds can carry the same carat, color, clarity, and grading laboratory, and one of them will never reach a client of ours. That gap is the work: reading the plot, the finish, and the face-up appearance against a written standard rather than against a price.
John Anderson, our Lead Gemologist, reviews cushions with clients every day. Send him the certificate of any stone you are considering and he will tell you what the paper says and what it leaves out. The consultation is complimentary and there is no obligation.
1-800-779-1726