There is a conversation that happens quietly and often. Someone has paid a meaningful premium for a very high clarity grade, and some months later they realise that nobody, including them, can tell the difference by looking.
It is an understandable outcome, because clarity is the one grade most easily mistaken for a measure of beauty. It is not. Clarity describes what a trained grader sees under magnification. What you see, across a dinner table or in afternoon light, is governed by something rather different. This is an account of what inclusions actually do to a diamond you are looking at with your own eyes.
[collection-carousel="diamond-engagement-rings"]
What The Grade Is Actually Describing
A clarity grade is a summary of a magnified view. GIA assesses clarity under 10x magnification, and the resulting grade sits on a scale running from Flawless and Internally Flawless through the VVS, VS and SI categories to the Included grades.
The part worth understanding is that the grade is not a count. GIA weighs the size, number, position, nature and relief of the characteristics it finds. Relief is simply how much an inclusion stands out against the surrounding diamond, and it is the factor that does most of the work visually. A single inclusion with high relief can be more noticeable than several faint ones.
Two stones can therefore share a grade and behave entirely differently in the hand. This is precisely why we assess stones individually rather than buying to a specification on paper.
[collection-carousel="round-brilliant-cut-diamond-rings"]
Eye Clean Is The Threshold That Matters
The term you will hear in a showroom is eye clean. It describes a diamond whose inclusions cannot be seen without magnification at a normal viewing distance.
It is worth knowing that eye clean is an industry term rather than a GIA grade. GIA does not use it, because it depends on the viewer, the lighting and the distance. That does not make it unimportant. For most people it is the only clarity question that genuinely bears on daily enjoyment, and it is a question best answered by looking rather than reading.
Where that threshold falls depends far more on the shape of the stone than on the grade alone.
|
Shape |
How forgiving it is |
Where attention is usually best spent |
|---|---|---|
|
Round brilliant |
Very forgiving |
Cut quality first, then eye clean confirmed in person |
|
Oval, pear, marquise, cushion |
Forgiving, with shape specific considerations |
Outline and light pattern, then eye clean |
|
Princess and radiant |
Reasonably forgiving |
Eye clean, with attention to the corners |
|
Emerald and Asscher |
Unforgiving |
Clarity genuinely matters here, alongside proportions |
[collection-carousel="oval-cut-diamond-rings"]
Why Shape Decides So Much Of This
This is the single most useful thing to understand about clarity, and it is rarely explained well.
Brilliant Cuts Work In Your Favour
A round brilliant and its fancy shaped relatives are cut with a large number of small facets arranged to return light in rapid, broken flashes. That pattern is visually busy, and a busy pattern conceals a great deal. An inclusion has to compete with the movement of light around it, and it usually loses.
Step Cuts Show You Everything
Emerald and Asscher cuts are the opposite proposition. Their facets are long, broad and arranged in parallel steps, producing the calm architectural flashes that make them so distinctive. There is nothing busy for an inclusion to hide behind. You are looking through a clear window rather than into a kaleidoscope.
The practical consequence is that clarity should be weighted differently by shape. In a step cut it earns its premium. In a well cut round brilliant, a grade increase you cannot see is a grade increase you have bought for the paperwork.
[collection-carousel="emerald-cut-diamond-rings"]
Position Is The Detail Nobody Mentions
Two diamonds of identical grade can differ entirely because of where their inclusions sit.
An inclusion directly beneath the table, in the centre of your view, is the least helpful location there is. The same inclusion sitting out towards the edge, where a claw will cover it once the stone is set, may as well not exist. This is one of the quiet advantages of working with a jeweller who selects the stone and designs the setting together, because a setting can be planned around a stone's character rather than fighting it.
Position also matters for a reason that has nothing to do with appearance. GIA notes that certain inclusions near the girdle can make a cut diamond more vulnerable to damage, and that inclusions can extend into a stone from its surface. A diamond is extraordinarily hard, but it is not indestructible, and an inclusion in the wrong place is a consideration for a ring that will be worn every day for decades.
[collection-carousel="asscher-cut-diamond-rings"]
Cut Does The Work That Clarity Gets Credit For
When someone says a diamond has extraordinary life, they are almost always describing cut.
GIA describes cut quality in terms of brightness, fire and scintillation, and assigns a cut grade to round brilliant diamonds from Excellent through to Poor. Those three qualities are what the eye actually responds to. They are a function of how precisely the stone was proportioned, polished and finished.
Hold a beautifully cut stone of modest clarity beside an indifferently cut stone of very high clarity and the question answers itself. The first has presence. The second has a better report. This is why cut is the one element we never compromise on, and why polish and symmetry are examined alongside it rather than treated as footnotes.
Our approach to sourcing and selecting stones begins here for exactly this reason.
[collection-carousel="solitaire-diamond-rings"]
The Upgrade That Costs Nothing
A point worth making plainly, because it accounts for more disappointment than clarity ever has.
Skin oils, hand cream and soap residue build up on a diamond and on the underside of its setting, and they reduce the light reaching and returning through the stone. Regular gentle cleaning restores that brilliance. A neglected Internally Flawless stone will look duller than a well kept SI1, every time.
If your ring has lost its life, the explanation is very rarely the grade on the report.
[collection-carousel="diamond-earrings"]
When A Higher Grade Is Still The Right Choice
We would not want to argue people out of something they genuinely value.
There is a distinction some collectors draw between eye clean and mind clean. Eye clean means you cannot see it. Mind clean means you know there is nothing meaningful there to see. For some people that knowledge is part of the pleasure of owning the stone, and that is an entirely legitimate reason to pay for a higher grade. It is a preference, though, rather than a visual improvement, and it deserves to be understood as one.
There are also sound practical reasons to move up the scale. Step cuts, as discussed. Larger stones, where everything is simply easier to see. And stones where the inclusion in question sits somewhere a setting cannot help.
[collection-carousel="halo-diamond-rings"]
How We Would Spend The Money
If a budget has to be allocated, this is the order we would recommend.
-
Cut, without compromise. It governs brightness, fire and scintillation, and nothing else can recover what a poor cut loses.
-
Eye clean, confirmed by looking. Not a grade on a page. The stone in your hand, in daylight and in lamplight.
-
The shape you love. Then weight clarity according to that shape rather than to a general rule.
-
Colour, judged in the setting. How a stone reads depends considerably on the metal around it.
-
Carat, last. A smaller stone of real quality holds attention that a larger dull one does not.
[collection-carousel="three-stone-diamond-rings"]
In Short
-
Clarity is graded under 10x magnification, so the grade describes a magnified view rather than what you see.
-
GIA weighs the size, number, position, nature and relief of characteristics, not a simple count.
-
Relief, meaning how much an inclusion stands out, does most of the visual work.
-
Two stones of the same grade can look quite different.
-
Eye clean is an industry term, not a GIA grade, and it is the threshold that matters day to day.
-
Brilliant cuts conceal inclusions because their light pattern is broken and busy.
-
Emerald and Asscher cuts conceal nothing, so clarity genuinely earns its premium there.
-
An inclusion under the table matters. One near the edge can be covered by a claw.
-
Inclusions near the girdle can affect durability, which is a separate question from appearance.
-
Cut governs brightness, fire and scintillation, and is what people are admiring.
-
A well cut stone of modest clarity outperforms a poorly cut stone of high clarity.
-
Skin oils and residue dull any diamond, so cleaning is the cheapest improvement available.
-
Mind clean is a legitimate preference, provided you know you are buying knowledge rather than appearance.
The honest conclusion is that clarity is the grade most worth understanding and least worth overpaying for, and that the difference between those two things can only be settled by looking at the stone. We would always rather show you two diamonds side by side than describe them.
You are welcome to see that difference for yourself, and our collection of diamond rings in Melbourne is a considered place to begin.
[collection-carousel="diamond-rings"]
