Meet The 4C's

Meet The 4c’s: Clarity, Color, Cut and Carat Weights

The Four C’s describe the qualities of a diamond in precise terms. They’ve become an international language. Three of them – color, clarity, and carat weight- were the basis for the first diamond grading system established in India over 2,000 years ago. Cut wasn’t important then. For one thing, nobody knew how to shape and polish a diamond. Today, cut is an important factor in determining a diamond’s value. In 1919, Marcel Tolkosky an engineer by education developed a mathematical formula for cutting diamonds.

Clarity: Diamonds have internal features, called inclusions, and surface irregularities, called blemishes. Together, they are called clarity characteristics. Clarity is the relative absence of inclusions and blemishes.

Color:  Diamond color is all about what you can’t see. Diamonds are valued by how closely they approach colourlessness. The less colour the higher the value. Fancy color diamonds such as blues and pinks lie outside the colour range.

Cut: A well cut diamond can make light perform in breathtaking ways, resulting in a magnificent display of three important diamond attributes – brightness, fire, and scintillation.

Carat Weights: As the carat size of a diamond increases, the diamond’s price increases at an increasing rate. Don’t confuse Carat with Karat, as in 18K gold, which refers to gold purity. Today, a carat is equal to exactly 0.2 grams. Two stones of equal size can vary in different values depending on the other members of the 4c’s.