Diamonds Under $1,000

A thousand dollars buys a good deal more diamond than most people expect, provided you know which of the four Cs to hold and which to let go.

At this level, shape does most of the work. A lab-grown round at this budget will typically land between one and one and a half carats; the same money in a mined stone reaches around half a carat. Elongated shapes — oval, pear, marquise — face up larger than their weight, so they stretch the budget further again. If size is what you are after, that combination is where to look first.

What to hold: cut. It is the only grade that changes how the stone actually behaves in light, and a poorly cut diamond looks poorly cut at any price. What to let go: clarity below the eye-clean threshold is invisible, so an SI1 that shows nothing to the naked eye is a better buy than a VS2 costing a third more. Colour down to H reads as white in a white metal setting, and further than that in yellow gold.

Every stone here is certified and shown in 360°, whatever it costs.