How to Buy Diamond Jewelry

Buying diamond jewelry is not as complicated as you might think. Companies such as Lark & Berry offer a range of jewelry pieces at affordable pieces. Lark & Berry uses of cultured diamonds and gemstones, exclusively. The company has made quite a name for itself in the past for the quality and sustainable approach of its jewelry. Lark & Berry was created by Laura Chavez, a Rice University undergrad and MBA graduate from London Business School, who wanted to create high-quality jewelry and more environmentally responsible luxury jewelry at more affordable prices.

Here are a few things that you should know if you are interested in buying diamond jewelry:

1 — Characteristics of the diamond: how to recognize the perfect stone

2 — Being aware of the most important features to keep in mind, for a peaceful and satisfying purchase, is essential.

3 — You need this information to know the factors that determine the value of gems. The main characteristics are defined as the 4Cs of diamonds: weight, cut, color, and purity.

Let’s take a closer took before you shop:

Diamond color

Color is the characteristic that most influences the purchase of a diamond — that includes its sparkling colors and even its shading. A diamond is in itself is mostly considered a colorless stone, but even still, it can take slightly different off-white or clear shades because of the presence of atoms of other substances, such as nitrogen, hydrogen, etc — these aspects can mafiest themselves in making a diamond appear in shades ranging from brown to gray or yellow.

Purity of diamonds

As any stones that come from our Earth must be considered “pure,” “diamond purity” is then a bit of a misnomer. What diamond sellers mean is more akin to “degree of diamond purity.”

Every diamond is a unique snowflake due to its formation circumstances. In fact, many diamonds which are mined, are discredited for use in jewelry after being dug up because they aren’t of a high enough standard. An interesting benefit of cultured diamonds (also known as lab grown diamonds) are that a Type IIa degree of diamond purity is regularly reached, where only 3% of mined diamonds reach that same benchmark.

Mined diamonds can more regularly be bet on to have inclusions or inhomogeneity. For example, the inclusion of non-crystallized carbon atoms (graphite) shows dark impurities.

Here are the classifications — the same for any diamonds in luxury:

FL — impeccable = pure, no internal or external imperfection identified by 10x;

IF — without internal defect = purely internal, no internal imperfection detectable in 10x;

VVSI1 e VVSI2 — very very light included = very small inclusions difficult to identify at 10x;

VSI1 e VSI2 — very light included = very small inclusions visible at 10x;

SI1 e SI2 — light included = small inclusions easily visible for 10x;

P1, P2, P2 — inclusive = inclusions visible to the naked eye;

The lower purity levels of the scale refer to diamonds called “stitching”.