Cut Quality of Diamond

Cut quality of diamond has a great impact on its brilliance and sparkle. So, it is important to understand the significance of diamond's cut quality.

If a diamond is well cut, incident light enters through its table and crown, travels towards the pavilion where it reflects and falls on opposite side of pavilion, before reflecting back out of the diamond through the table towards the observer’s eye. This phenomenon of total internal reflection of light makes diamond mesmerizing and unique among all gemstones.

If the facets of diamond are unsymmetrical or if cut of diamond is not according to proportions or if diamond is not polished properly, then it affects the quality of light reflection which then impacts the brilliance, dispersion and brightness of diamond.

How cut of diamond affects the path of light passing through diamond?

In Shallow cut and Deep cut diamonds, the incident light enters through the table, reaches the pavilion and then refracts out from the sides or bottom of the diamond instead of reflecting back to observer’s eye through the table.

Due to this, shallow and deep cut diamonds possess less brilliance as compared to Ideal cut diamond in which the maximum amount of incident light is reflected back to the observer’s eyes through the pavilion. Check the below image.

Variations in cuts result in difference in sparkle and brilliance of diamond. However, only an expert grader can make out the difference between various cuts.

Grading of Cut Quality of Diamond

Diamond Cuts are classified into various grades. These grades are as follows with decreasing quality of cut:

• Ideal cut: Ideal cut diamond has comparatively small table, which creates great amount of dispersion of incident light creating maximum brilliance.
• Premium cut: In round diamonds, Premium cut are very much similar to ideal cut diamond. But there is slight difference in price of premium cut and ideal cut diamond.
• Very Good cut: In these diamonds, cutters try to retain maximum carat weight moving slightly away from standard diamond proportions. These diamonds are cheaper than premium cut diamonds.
• Good cut: In these diamonds, cutters try to achieve largest possible diamond by compromising on cut quality of diamond. These diamonds are suitable for customers with limited budget who don’t want to compromise on quality or beauty.
• Fair and Poor cut: Diamonds with fair and poor cut disperse only small amount of incident light. These diamonds result when cutters consider only weight retention instead of cut quality. These diamonds are available for much lesser price but are generally not preferred.

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