Solitaire Engagement Rings

A solitaire does one thing: it holds a single diamond and gets out of the way. No side stones competing for attention, no halo enlarging the outline — just the stone, the metal and the light. It is the setting most people picture when they picture an engagement ring, and it is the hardest to hide behind.

That is worth knowing before you choose it. In a halo or a pavé setting, surrounding diamonds add sparkle and visual size, which means a smaller or slightly warmer centre stone still reads as impressive. A solitaire offers no such help. Whatever you set in it is exactly what people see, so this is the setting where the cut grade of your diamond matters most.

The compensation is that a solitaire lets you spend everything on the stone rather than on the mounting, and it never dates. Prong count changes the character: four prongs show more of the diamond and give a cleaner outline, six hold more securely and slightly round off the shape of the stone.

Every setting here comes in 14K white, yellow or rose gold and accepts all ten diamond shapes. Choose the setting first or the stone first — the configurator works in both directions.