Photo by Sabrinna Ringquist on Unsplash
Diamonds are one of the world’s most highly prized gemstones, and it can be hard to understand why until you see an example of a well-cut, beautifully set diamond, doing what it does best: sparkling! The light absorbed and thrown out by a diamond is something wonderful to behold, and it really does need to be seen in the flesh: photographs or video footage do not seem to show off diamonds to their best advantage. When choosing a diamond, most people opt for the round cut brilliant design for their stone. Why is this, you might wonder. It is, of course, because the cut enhances the shine. Let us look deeper into the advantages of opting for a round cut diamonds.
Shine
The round brilliant cut diamond is now the iconic diamond shape. Ask a child to draw a diamond – that is the shape they will come up with. Imagine a diamond for your engagement ring – it is most likely a round brilliant that you are picturing. The round brilliant cut is a fairly new invention – dating from just over one hundred years ago (for context, people have been shaping gemstones since the 1400s) – and it is mathematically designed to absorb a maximum amount of light through all its facets, bouncing the light around inside the stone and releasing it all through the top (or table) of the stone for a truly wonderful display of light, scintillation and brilliance that actually dazzles the viewer so the shape of the stone is hard to discern. While the square princess cut is also a brilliant design from a light-show point of view, the round brilliant is widely accepted as being the most efficient at channeling the light.
Fashionable
Since their inception in 1919, round brilliant cut diamonds have become more and more popular until their current position in which over half of all diamonds sold commercially are round brilliants. This is not just because the cut is the one most frequently chosen by jewelers or even because it creates the best light display. It is because it has become associated in the mind of the public with diamonds. If you want a ‘diamond’ you want that shape – much as someone imagining the moon wants either a full moon or a crescent – despite the fact that the visible moon changes shape daily during each lunar cycle! This generic association with ‘diamond-shaped’ has done the round brilliant cut an enormous favor, boosting its popularity in the mind of the public.
Versatile
But this is not to say that the round brilliant cut is enjoying an unfair advantage. It became so popular and so entwined with the idea of an ideal diamond because of its tremendous versatility. Round brilliant cut diamonds lend themselves to many different settings, from secure beveled mounts to four, six or eight-prong claws, and to a plethora of other options. This means that the stones can be used in almost any type of jewelry: from free-swinging dangly earrings to chain-mounted tennis bracelets in which up to fifty six or so identical stones create one of the iconic pieces.
When you think diamond, you are really thinking round brilliant cut diamond. And there is nothing wrong with that!
