Diamond Rings

Diamond Rings And Carat Weight

Carat sounds so like carrot but that isn’t what it stands for. The carat of a diamond refers to the weight of a diamond and this weight is expressed as carats which go back to the ‘carob seeds’ of the Middle East. These seeds came from a tree whose botanical name is Ceratonia Siliqua. The Greeks called it ‘Keration’ and somehow the two have got combined to give us ‘carat’.

Diamond Rings and Carob Seeds

Why was a seed used as a measure of weight? Though it sounds rather strange, the truth of the matter was that the carob seeds all weighed in at the same weight. This uniform weight made it a great form of measurement when it came to precious metals, stones and other items like pearls.

Diamond Rings and the Carat today

One would think that because of the name, the carob seeds are still in use today to measure the weight of a diamond. However, this is not so and the weight of a carat has been standardized for sometime now and it is one-fifth of a gram. So if a 1-carat stone is one-fifth of a gram, a 5-carat stone weighs 1 gram.

Diamond Rings And Dividing The Carat

Each carat consists of 100 points and there are miniscule stones that can weigh a point or even less. A ¼ carat stone is 25 points while a ½ carat stone is 50 points. The very small diamonds are used in pavé settings or even in channel settings.

Diamond Rings – Carats and Size of Diamonds

There are certain approximate and even given sizes for diamonds depending on the weight. So a 1 carat diamond will be 5.9 mm across while a 3-carat diamond will be 9.3 mm. A 5-carat diamond which weighs 1 gram will be 11 mm across.

Depending on the weight of the diamond, the price increases. If the diamond quality is the same as a larger stone’s, the price of the larger stone could be much higher. The heavier and larger the diamond, think of the price going up exponentially. This is what makes diamonds so expensive and so exclusive. Considering that it takes over 250 tons of ore very often to find a 1 carat diamond, diamonds are obviously higher priced that most items you can buy simply because of the demand and supply situation. As larger diamonds are much rarer than the ones that are smaller and weigh less, they command very high prices. Which is why a diamond can be measured weight wise in carats but it cannot be priced according to its carats unlike so many other things all over the world.