Diamond Clarity: part 1

All the four "C's" work together to bring you a great looking diamond. The two I really emphasize for most people, are color and clarity. Clarity is how clean the stone is. This is a pretty important factor.

Imagine you are looking at your mother's living room window, as it looks out over the city. It's beautiful, but if I fling mud on that same window, you don't notice the view as much as the mud. It's the same thing with inclusions (the birthmarks in the stone).

These inclusions are naturally occurring flaws in the diamond and can look like: clouds, cracks, spots of pepper, bits of dust, anything that takes away from the beauty of your stone. Not all birthmarks look like black spots. 

On the highest end of the spectrum, we have:

Flawless (FL): These diamonds are extremely rare and are the Donald Trump of diamonds. You look at them under high magnification and they are as clean as running water.

At the completely other end, we have:

I: stands for Imperfect. These diamonds have inclusions easily seen with the naked eye. I2 and I3, in my opinion tend to look like frozen spit. This level is the equivalent of throwing a milk shake on your windshield and trying to see out. *Disclaimer* This has to be taken on a stone, by stone basis. I have seen some I2 stones where the inclusion either adds character (as in water bubbles or fancy shaped inclusions), or could be hidden with the prongs or setting.

Next level up the, Small Inclusions, or SI. It's important to mention that SI1 is the last stage you can see an inclusion with the naked eye. You should normally need to use a loupe, or ten power magnification.

In the VS1-VS2 (Very Small Inclusions), you should not be able to see anything (in a round brilliant diamond) with the naked eye.

What I consider the Range of Affordability is from the SI1-VS1 range. In this range you get a high quality stone, that shouldn't break the bank.


VVS1-VVS2 (Very Very Small Inclusions) is the next highest. Here only experienced diamond graders should be able to see the blemish. I've joke with customers and told them if they can see anything here, they should probably either be combat pilots or solder mother boards on computers.

Internally Flawless (IF) is the level below Flawless, and rightfully so. These are extremely rare.

A quick little saying is "The brighter the white, the cleaner the stone, the higher the cost."