Index
Guides
The background you need before comparing retailers: what the grades mean, what a carat costs, and where lab-grown makes sense.
Check live prices — we don't print them here, because they change daily.
Rings
The centre stone is where nearly all the money goes. Compare the same specification at each — shape, carat, colour, clarity, cut grade and grading laboratory held identical, or you are not comparing anything.
Earrings
Sold by total carat weight across the pair, so a 1ct pair is two half-carat stones. Cheap enough to make a sensible first purchase from a retailer you have not used before.
Bracelets
Check the clasp and the safety catch before the stone quality. A tennis bracelet that springs open on the wrist is the most common way people lose one.
Necklaces
The chain matters more than buyers expect. Check the gauge and the clasp — a heavy pendant on a thin chain is a repair waiting to happen.
Links open each retailer's own category page. Rare Carat links are affiliate links and earn us a commission if you buy, at no extra cost to you. The other three are plain links that earn us nothing today; if that changes, this line changes with it. Every relationship is listed on the disclosure page.
- The 4Cs, without the sales pitch — Four grades decide what a diamond costs. Only one of them decides what it looks like. Retailers rarely put it that way,...
- Which grading reports to trust — A grading report is only worth the reputation of the laboratory that issued it. Two labs dominate online retail, they...
- Lab-grown vs natural: the honest trade-off — They are the same material, graded on the same scales, and one of them has lost most of its value over five years. That...
- Finding a ring size without asking — Four methods, ranked by how often they actually work, plus the one thing that matters more than getting it right: what...
- How much to spend — The three-months-salary rule was written by an advertising agency in the 1930s. Here is a way to set a number that is...
Still to write
In build order: what a one-carat diamond actually costs, month by month · how to read a grading report line by line · diamond shapes and what each one hides · insurance and valuation after the purchase.