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This generally covers 4 factors that affect your diamond price. And to meet with your budget, you will have to adjust your choices around these 4 factors. 

The 4Cs are: color, carat, clarity, and cut. Now, let’s go through each factor before you make any decision. 

C-Color

This is the factor that has the most effect on diamond price. A slight difference in color can cause a huge difference in budget. GIA (The Gemological Institute of America) has introduced a D-Z color scale to do this work. The scale helps us communicate about diamond color, which varies from colorless (D color) to light yellow diamond (Z color). The more the colorless it is, the more expensive the diamond will be. 

C-Carat

This is about diamond weight. The more weight, the more it will cause you. Now, what should interest you is the premium weight. Before any further details, we have to mention the Rapaport Price. It is the standard pricing system for any commercial diamonds in the world. It comes in tables. Each table covers only a certain weight range as shown below.

So the premium weight is what around the highest weights of each table before it goes to the other weight range. The great thing about it is that you get the big stone with fewer budgets (when compared to the next weight range). Let’s say instead of buying a 1.00 ct size diamond, you can save quite a lot of your budget if you go for a 0.99 ct without trading off so much mm size of your diamond. However, this premium size diamond is rare.

C-Clarity

This factor is about cleanliness. The following chart shows how many choices you have for clarity.

The most expensive one is Flawless, which means both inside and outside the diamond are totally clean. The more common ones are VS and SI.

C-Cut

Last but not least is cutting. This factor includes cutting, symmetry and polish quality. The best cutting now is 3EX – for round diamonds. All cutting, symmetry and polish are graded as “Excellence”. As for fancy cut diamonds, 2EX is the maximum as there is no grading on cutting due to its large variety. 

Among the 3 factors, cutting is the most important as it affects the fire of the stone. So it is best to choose diamonds that have an excellent cut. As for symmetry and polish, you can choose those with Excellent to Good grades.

 

	Written by Sornsida Y. Chanonprapa (G.D. GIA 2015)
	Diamond Nerd จากสถาบัน GIA ศึกษาเรียนรู้ หัด grading เพชรมาโดยเฉพาะ บวกกับพื้นฐานเป็นลูกช่างทอง มีประสบการณ์ทำงานใน Field จิวเวลรี่มากว่า 20ปี จึงอยากใช้พื้นที่นี้แบ่งปันความรู้และประสบการณ์กับทุกคนค่ะ