Choosing Your Perfect Diamond

Learning how to buy a perfect diamond can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. James Allen strives to make this process easier by offering you an easy-to-follow tutorial on the 4 C's of diamonds: cut, color, clarity, and carat weight. Helping our customers create their ideal engagement rings is what we do, by offering them thousands of loose diamonds and teaching them how to choose the diamond that matches their quality requirements and budget.

Carat refers to the size of the diamond. This is the characteristic that people notice first, that gives an immediate "wow" factor to an engagement ring. The most valuable diamonds are considered colorless, starting with the "D" color grade. Diamond Clarity refers to the presence (or absence) of inclusions in a diamond. For a guarantee that you will be selecting a diamond with no inclusions visible to the naked eye, limit your selection to those diamonds graded VS2 or higher in our diamond database. Diamond Cut is not only about shape, but how effectively the stone can return light back to the viewer's eye. James Allen categorizes diamonds into four diamond cut categories: True Hearts, Ideal Cut, Premium and Good.

Browse loose diamonds using our diamond selector tool, or read more about certified diamonds from the Gemological institute of America (GIA), the American Gemological Society (AGS), or The Institute of Gemology (IGI).