In many of Singapore’s diverse cultural traditions, jewellery is a meaningful and well appreciated gift. With Christmas and the giving season coming up, you may already be looking for beautiful pieces to gift your loved ones. Orchard Road jewellery store M and B Private Jewellers have revealed some diamond jewellery shopping secrets to get you more bang for your buck – and a bigger diamond.
1. Buy early
According to Google Trends, most jewellery items see a 80-200% jump in demand starting in November, peaking in mid December just before Christmas. By beating this Christmas rush, you get access to a much larger selection, and a higher chance of finding a magical deal with a truly impressive diamond. The closer you get to Christmas, you’ll have less choice. So shop in advance.
2. Be smart about inclusions
If you are a well read diamond shopper, you are aware of the 4Cs, one of which is clarity. Clarity determines how many inclusions (internal defects) the diamond has, and falls on a scale from Flawless (F), to Significantly Included (SI), with many grades in between. But this is not the end of the story.
If your diamond has an inclusion close to the edge, it can often be covered up by the prongs of your jewellery piece, whether it’s in a ring, tennis bracelet, pendant, or anything else. So the diamond is technically a worse grade of clarity, but functionally the inclusion is almost invisible, meaning you can get a better price than an equally sized diamond of better clarity.
The table below shows a guideline based on the Rapaport Diamond Report 2024 of diamond prices relative to an Internally Flawless F Color Round Diamond of 1 carat:
Inclusion Grade | IF | VVS1 | VVS2 | VS1 | VS2 | SI1 | SI2 | SI3 |
Suggested Price | 100% | 91% | 81% | 73% | 61% | 51% | 41% | 37% |
Additionally, without magnification it is very difficult to tell the difference between VVS2 and SI2, which is formally a gigantic gap in terms of clarity grade. So, if you are not too fussy you can achieve a considerably larger stone for the same price.
3. The crown size of the diamond matters more than the carats
Many shoppers like to fixate on the carats (weight) of the diamond, as it is a simple and proven way to measure the size of the stone you are buying. But no one can actually tell how many carats your diamond is simply by looking at it. Diamonds can have deeper or shallower cuts. A deeper cut may weigh even 20% more than a shallow one but have the same exact dimensions (width and length) when viewed from above, as it is in a piece of jewellery.
So before you buy, ask if there are other diamonds with the same carat but larger crown size. People can’t weigh your stone with their eyes but they sure can be impressed by its crown size.
4. Go down the color grading
Just like clarity, color is another one of the 4Cs that is often taken at face value. But there is much more to it. Outside of trained jewellers and diamond graders, most people can’t tell the difference between truly colorless (D-F) and the almost colorless grades (G-J). Color impacting only starts to be subtly noticeable towards the I and J grades. So you can get yourself a more impressive stone by not focusing on the color label, and appreciating what it actually looks like to your eye.
The table below shows a guideline based on the Rapaport Diamond Report 2024 of diamond prices relative to a D color VVS2 Round Diamond of 1 carat:
Diamond Color | D | E | F | G | H | I | J |
Suggested Price | 100% | 90% | 82% | 69% | 57% | 48% | 39% |
Contrast with colored metals or gems
Additionally, if you prefer a yellow or rose gold setting, the contrast those colors provide means that whatever slight color impacting there is, will be much much less noticeable, if at all. You can go even further down the color grade scale, to colors that would be deemed unacceptable for a white gold/neutral silvery setting.
Having colored gems in your jewellery provides the same effect. A slightly yellowish L or M graded white diamond will look very white next to vivid colors like the greens, blues, reds, yellows of spinel, garnet, emeralds, sapphires and rubies.
5. Bonus Tip – go for a halo setting
Technically not adding any size to your diamond, choosing a halo setting around your main stone makes the illusion of a larger stone. This works especially well with a very radiant cut like round, pear, or marquise, as the sparkle at the edges of the diamond will almost seamlessly trickle into the sparkle of the halo, making it hard to tell where the main diamond actually ends.
So whilst your diamond remains the same size, the sparkle that diamonds are prized for, grows around it and makes your jewellery much more impressive.
Conclusion
The 5 Christmas shopping tips for bigger diamonds:
- Buy in October
- Be smart about inclusions
- Crown Size matters more than Carats
- Go down the color grading
- Go for a halo