Heart Shaped Diamond Guide: Quality, Clarity, Color and Cost

THE HEART SHAPED DIAMOND

A timeless symbol of love, a heart shaped diamond is a unique, special alternative to the more common diamond cuts.

More than two thirds of all diamonds sold on the market are round brilliants. In contrast, heart shaped diamonds make up only a tiny fraction of the total number of diamonds sold every year, making a heart shaped diamond a unique, rare and special choice.

Heart shaped diamonds are used in a variety of jewelry pieces, from pendants to bracelets and more. However, diamonds of this type are most commonly used as a center stone in a diamond engagement ring.

HEART SHAPED DIAMOND – CLARITY

Clarity refers to how clean a diamond appears when it’s viewed by a gemologist. Diamonds with high clarity grades typically have very few inclusions and blemishes; diamonds with lower clarity grades often have multiple large, highly visible inclusions.

  • IF – Internally Flawless
  • VVS1 – Very Very Small Inclusions
  • VVS2 – Very Very Small Inclusions
  • VS1 – Very Small Inclusions
  • VS2 – Very Small Inclusions
  • SI1 – Small Inclusions
  • SI2 – Small Inclusions
  • I1 – Inclusions
  • I2 – Inclusions

HEART SHAPED DIAMOND – CARAT WEIGHT

Like other diamond shapes, heart shaped diamonds are available in a massive variety of carat weights.

As we covered in our guide to carat weight, we usually recommend choosing the largest carat weight that fits within your budget. By saving on clarity and color using the information above, you can often get a significantly larger diamond than you might have originally expected.

With fancy cuts like heart shaped diamonds, the shape of the diamond becomes more visually appealing at larger carat weights. The higher the carat weight of the diamond, the more visible and obvious the heart shape becomes.

Length to Width (L/W) Ratio

First, it’s important to limit your search to heart shaped diamonds that have an acceptable length to width ratio.

The ideal length to width ratio for a heart shaped diamond is 1.00, meaning a diamond is exactly as long as it is wide. Heart shaped diamonds with an ideal or near-ideal length to width ratio will look proportionate and natural, without appearing overly bulbous or stretched.

Finding a heart shaped diamond’s length to width ratio is simple. Blue Nile list it in the “diamond details” section of each diamond’s product information. For James Allen, you can find it in each diamond’s “information” section, along with other quality details.

For example, this 1.73 carat heart shaped diamond from James Allen is 7.21mm long and 8.41mm wide, giving it greater width than length. James Allen have given it a L/W ratio of 1.17 (the actual L/W ratio is 0.86).

HEART SHAPED DIAMOND – COLOR

The diamond color grades used by the GIA range from D to Z, with a D grade indicating that a diamond is completely clear and colorless. At the other end of the scale, a Z grade identifies a diamond with an obvious, clearly visible yellow or brown tint.

Heart shaped diamonds are a modified version of the round brilliant cut. Because they reflect lots of light, the color of a heart shaped diamond is harder to distinguish than it is in a diamond with a large table, such as an Emerald or Asscher cut.

This means that there’s no need to choose a flawless color grade. Doing so will only increase the price you pay for the diamond, without having any noticeable impact on how it looks when viewed with the naked eye.

Symmetry

Symmetry is one of the most important factors for a heart shaped diamond. Because a heart is quite a complicated shape, there are several factors you’ll want to look at when checking that a diamond is cut symmetrically.

There are several different aesthetic features that make up the heart shape of this cut. There’s the cleft — the inward-facing point at the top of the diamond. There’s also the point — the sharp point at the bottom of the diamond.

Then, there are the lobes (the rounded portions of the diamond that create the heart shape), as well as the belly and the wing of each side of the diamond.

Before we get into the left to right symmetry of the diamond, it’s important to look at the factors you’ll want to look for in the diamond’s cleft and point.