HIGH DIAMOND CLARITY OR HIGH COLOR?

Which is Better?

When people are shopping for diamonds, especially loose certified diamonds, they’re always torn…

Torn between color and clarity.

Most ask questions regarding the quality of one stone versus another.

As in:

Which diamond would you recommend? An SI1, E, or a VVS2, H?

To which I’ll 99.9% of the time reply:

The SI1, E, hands-down!

Here’s why…

Both diamonds (again, going back to the example of SI1 and VVS2 above) are eye-clean diamonds. Meaning, you can’t see the flaws or inclusions with the bare eye. You’d need a microscope or a 10x jeweler’s loupe to see them.

Which really means, unless you microscope your diamond (which you’ll probably never do except for the day you buy it), you’ll never be able to tell the difference between them—They’d look identical.

But with Color…

With the difference in color (one being an E, the other being an H), chances are good, you will be able to see the difference.

Granted, they are both “white” diamonds, but the E diamond is pure white, and the H diamond is off-white, or fine-white. So the E will probably pop more, and look bigger and brighter.

Putting these two stones side by side, the SI1, E will more than likely look better than the VVS2, H.

In most cases, the BETTER COLOR WINS!

But, there are some exceptions to this rule that could change everything!

Things like:

• If one diamond has a better cut (like Excellent or Very Good), that diamond will probably look better, regardless of the color or clarity (cut always trumps all the other 4 c’s).
• If one diamond is round, and the other diamond is fancy (princess, radiant, oval, cushion…), the round diamond will probably look whiter and better because the diamond is perfectly symmetrical.
• If the diamond is I clarity (Included diamonds: I1, I2, I3), that stone will probably look worse than any other color or clarity.
• If one diamond has a bigger carat weight than the other, the larger diamond will have more color than the smaller stone. Likewise, even two diamonds are the same color, like H versus H, if one diamond is much larger, the larger stone will show more color than the smaller.
• If one diamond has fluorescence, and the other diamond doesn’t, the one with no (or zero) fluorescence will probably appear better visually.
• If one diamond is graded by GIA, and the other diamond is graded by IGI or EGL, chances are, the GIA stone will face up better (GIA is more strict than any other diamond report company in the world).

All in all…

Clarity is such a small factor when it comes to the beauty of a diamond (unless you can see huge black spots or cracks or clouds with the naked eye).

But everything else:

Color, cut, fluorescence, size… is something that could have a huge bearing on how the diamond is perceived.

Which is why I always (most of the time) say, GO WITH COLOR-GO WITH CUT… Those two things will help your diamond shine and sparkle better than any small, microscopic flaw.

Check out loose certified diamonds here, at James Allen.

(If you really want to see stones that knock her socks off!)

Cheers! :)