Diamond Cut

Diamond cut is one of the 4C’s that you have to be familiar when buying a diamond.

There are so many factors depending on perfect diamond cut. The diamond fire which means prismatic colors of a diamond and diamond brilliance (sparkle of a diamond) are subordinate of diamond cut.

Another factor that depends on diamond cut is diamond polish and weight.

The result of proper diamond cut can be the most amazing diamond colors you have ever seen in your life.

Diamond Anatomy

Before we start to talk about diamond cut you should be familiar with a diamond anatomy. On the picture below you can see all the parts of the diamond anatomy. This example is for a round brilliant cut diamond.

Different diamond cuts have usually the same components, but if you come across special cut diamonds like for example radiant, princess and other custom cuts, they have additional facets to enhance its brilliance.

Diamond cut is a needed process during the diamond production. Diamond cutters use the raw diamond and cut it into polishing and shiny stone, that emits its special colors, sparks and brilliance.

Let’s look at the diamond cut in more details. Round cut diamond will be our example.

On average round cut diamond has 58 facets and that goes to about 75 % of all diamonds. There are different “experts” out there who have their own proportions and they claim that only theirs is the correct one. You have to be careful with these people. Sometimes people are just trying to reduce productions and cutting costs of a diamond so they claim only their design is perfect, but only few people really know what their real motive is.

The goal of ideal cut is to make as much light coming in the diamond and return to the human eye. The light should enter into the diamond, bounce and return back to the eye. During this process the bouncing of the light will reproduce different color effects and brilliance.

Diamond Cuts

In the picture (a) you can see that all the light is bouncing back in the eye direction.

In picture (b) you can see a common mistake when a diamond cutter is trying to increase diamond diameter and extract more weight at the same time. The result is shallow diamond stone and the light will not bounce back. It will escape through lower or side parts of a diamond structure and the result will be lower brilliance and less pure diamond colors.

A diamond expert can easily see the difference between optimal and shallow diamond cut.

In the picture (c ) you can see opposite problem, where the diamond cut is too deep. The light escapes in the lower parts of a diamond structure.