The complete guide
How to read a diamond.
Four grades decide what a diamond looks like and what it costs — cut, color, clarity and carat. Here is what each one actually means on a hand, which ones are worth paying for, and which ones quietly don't matter.
01 · Cut
The only C you can see across a room.
Cut is not the shape — it is the geometry: how precisely the facets are angled and proportioned. Cut too deep or too shallow and light leaks out the sides or the bottom instead of returning to your eye. A perfectly cut stone of modest color and clarity will out-sparkle a flawless stone with a mediocre cut, every time. It is the grade we refuse to compromise on.
Ideal / Excellent
VARNI stocks this
Very Good
Good
Fair
Poor
02 · Color
Graded D to Z — the less, the better.
The color scale measures the absence of color: D is icy, Z is visibly warm. The scale was designed for grading trays and side-by-side comparison — on a hand, set in metal, the difference between D and G is close to invisible. Yellow gold settings even flatter a touch of warmth. We stock D through G, and we tell you exactly which letter your stone is.
03 · Clarity
Nature's fingerprints, under 10× magnification.
Clarity grades count the tiny internal characteristics — inclusions — visible under a jeweler's loupe. The scale runs from Flawless down to Included. Here is the honest part: everything from VS2 upward is eye-clean — at reading distance you will never see a thing. Paying for FL is paying for a certificate line, not a visible difference. Our line runs VVS1 to VS2.
Green marks the VARNI range — eye-clean with room to spare.
04 · Carat
Weight — not size, and priced on a curve.
A carat is 0.2 grams of diamond. Two things surprise people. First, face-up size grows slower than weight — a 2.00ct round looks nowhere near twice as big as a 1.00ct. Elongated shapes like oval and marquise face up larger per carat. Second, price does not grow in a straight line: our engine prices the stone roughly with weight to the power 1.65, so a 2ct costs about three times a 1ct — that curve is on every product page, live, as you change the carat.
Beyond the 4Cs
The fine print that isn't fine.
Polish & symmetry
How finely the facets are finished and how precisely they mirror each other. Graded Excellent to Poor; both quietly affect sparkle. Ours grade Excellent.
Fluorescence
A soft glow under UV light, graded None to Very Strong. None-to-Faint is invisible in daily life — every VARNI stone is graded None.
Certification
An independent IGI or GIA report records every grade on this page, and the report number is laser-inscribed on the girdle — verifiable under any loupe.
Eye-clean
The only clarity question that matters in real life: can you see anything at reading distance? VVS and VS stones are eye-clean by a wide margin.
If you remember one thing
Spend in this order.
- 1 Cut — never compromise; it is all of the sparkle
- 2 Clarity — eye-clean is the finish line (VS2+); beyond that is paperwork
- 3 Color — near-colorless (D–G) reads icy on every hand
- 4 Carat — whatever the budget still allows, guilt-free
Quick answers
Grading, asked plainly.
Rarely, once it is set. Side by side on a grading tray, D and G read differently to a trained eye; on a hand, in a setting, in real light, nearly nobody can tell. G–F is the sweet spot for value — icy white without the collector premium.
A well-placed VS2 or VS1. SI stones can be eye-clean bargains, but it depends entirely on where the inclusions sit — and you cannot tell from a grade alone. VS clarity removes the gamble; that is why our line starts there.
Because cut is the only C you can see from across the room. A perfectly cut G/VS2 will out-sparkle a poorly cut D/IF every single time — proportions decide how much light returns to your eye, and no color or clarity grade can compensate for light leaking out the bottom.
Identically. Labs grade lab-grown stones on the same 4C scales, with the same instruments and the same standards — the growth method is noted on the report, and nothing else changes.