Q&A: Help Finding a Round Diamond for a White Gold Setting With Around $5k Budget

Hello, I’m looking to buy a loose diamond for my upcoming proposal to my girlfriend. I’ve done as much research as I think I can and have my criteria. I’m very fortunate in that I selected my criteria based on research on 4Cs (mainly on your site!) and it just so happens that my budget falls squarely within that criteria;

budget: £2,500 – £4,000
Shape: Round
Cut: Excellent/Ideal or better
Carat: 0.90 – 1.05
Clarity: SI2 – VSI2
Colour: G or H

Problem is, I’ve plugged that into a Blue Nile and James Allen and it’s returned hundreds of diamonds. I’ve tried to run through them and make some judgements, but feel that at this point I need some expert advise to find the ‘right’ diamond. Otherwise, I’ll just end up going for the ‘bigger is better’ approach, which I think could be a mistake. From my search I do feel like a sweet spot could be around 0.95-0.99 carat. It’s clear from James Allen I won’t get over 1ct that’s higher than SI2 or H for £4,000 or under.

Here’s a link to my searches so far:
James Allen Search
Blue Nile Search

Things to note. My eyesight is very good, and now when I use the magnified views on those sights, all I can see is inclusions! I know it makes no difference as they’re all probably “eye-clean” but I can’t see them now as imperfections! However importantly, my girlfriend’s eyesight… not so great!

Any guidance you can provide would be greatly appreciated. I don’t need the diamond for at least 2 months yet.

Lovely to e-meet you! Your website already has helped me a lot!

So setting is tricky as plan is to choose that together with my fiancé (luck permitting!). I think she’ll really enjoy the experience of choosing her own setting. She’s already said she’d want a round diamond and I think she’s referenced a solitaire, although I suspect she doesn’t necessary know what else is out there. So I’d say focus on solitaire, or the most common after that perhaps. I think we’ll go white gold, since I just read about the fallacy of platinum! I hope that helps?

I’ve also done a bit more research on your site, and based on a round, solitaire diamond in a white gold setting I’ve definitely re-thought on the colour – so would be happy with a H-I colour, rather than G-H – if it allowed me to get a larger carat or bring cost down.

Many thanks.

Happy to go with Blue Nile.

That diamond looks brilliant, but then again I genuinely struggle to tell the difference! So this is a really good benchmark for me to use, since it’s more or less in the middle of my budget.

Only thoughts now are – given I’m not going to know exactly what setting she’ll want to go for before I buy the diamond (so therefore could well be a halo) – should I not go on the safe side with a H colour… or is there really very little difference, even for a halo setting?

Other thing I’m interested in is what that extra £400 in my budget would get me? Would it purely be the difference between a H and an I? Or would it help me increase the carat to closer to 1? I can explore this myself on Blue Nile now we’ve narrowed down the criteria, but if you could show me a couple more examples between £3,500 – £4,000 that would be really helpful too. In all likelyhood I won’t go below; £3,500, I colour or 0.9 carat now… Would go as low as SI2, but still want it to be eye-clean.

……

Ok, so I did a bit more research on Blue Nile tonight, based on the below update. Seems the answer to my question may be that extra £400 won’t get me that much!

I tried playing about with the filters, in order to get the carat higher than .9 and learnt two things 1) there aren’t many above .90 and below 1.0… Certainly none with a photo which is a must for me and 2) in order to push it to 1.0 carat at £4K or less I have to go for SI2 and unfortunately all 4 returned looked full of imperfections to me (albeit at 10x zoom).

I don’t feel like I can compromise any further on colour or cut, so my only options to get above 1.0 carat seem to be, luck out with an eye-clean SI2 or increase budget (bad idea!).

What do you think? Can anyone untrained even tell the difference between a .9 or a 1.0 carat?

I did find these .9s (attached) which looked nice and are in budget. What do you think? Not much different spec-wise to the one you sent me… I think just VS1/2 and therefore more expensive.

Ok. Happy with 0.9 carat in that case and not too fussed over ensuring it’s a H colour, as I think to naked eye nobody would notice difference anyway. I’m almost certain she wants more of a solitaire style and I’m sure she’s said she doesn’t like halo settings before. So I think we’d be safe with an I colour.

Apologies but I can’t see any link/attachment/photo in your email below, did you mean to send me a new diamond to look at when you said “I checked and this diamond is the biggest stone in diameter within your budget and with a real picture.

Or were you referring to the diamond you sent me a link to yesterday?

Many thanks, especially for the coupon code!

I’ve done it! I just ordered the one you originally sent me on Tuesday!

Thank you for all your help and now onto the next stage… Choosing the setting, but fortunately I’ll have the help of my girlfriend (fiance hopefully) for that… I’m thinking a tension setting would be great!