HEART-SHAPED GEMSTONES AND DIAMONDS

A heart-shaped gemstone or diamond is one of the rarest “fancy” shapes available from jewelers. This is because only a highly-skilled artisan can cut a gemstone into a heart properly. This is especially true of diamonds, which are much more challenging to work with due to their exceptional hardness.

However, heart-cut diamonds and heart-shaped gemstones are becoming very popular. For a long time, they were primarily used in pendants and for other pieces of jewelry such as earrings, but they’ve become quite popular in recent years as engagement ring stones. After all, what shape is better than a heart when you’re pledging yourself to the person you love?

At Revolution Jewelry Works, we’re all about keeping our customers informed and giving you all of the information you need to make the right buying decision. So in this guide, we’ll be taking a deep look at heart-cut diamonds and heart-shaped gemstones – to help you decide if diamond heart rings, necklaces, or other jewelry pieces are right for you. Read on and get all the details!

What Is A Heart-Shaped Gemstone Or Heart-Cut Diamond?

As the name implies, heart-cut diamonds and gemstones look like a heart – the traditional symbol of love. They are usually trimmed from brilliant-cut diamonds. If you’re not familiar, a “brilliant” cut is a round diamond that has a ton of different “facets” (cut surfaces). These facets catch and reflect light, causing the diamond to glitter with “fire” and brilliance in the interior, hence the name.

To break things down further, let’s discuss the basic anatomy of heart-shaped and heart-cut diamonds. They consist of the:

• Cleft, which is the point at the top of the stone where the top of the heart meets
• Lobes, which are the two rounded heart edges at the top of the stone
• Belly, which is the middle of the diamond
• Wings, which are the two sides of the heart that meet to create the point
• Point, which is the point opposite of the cleft where the wings meet

An experienced jeweler can trim and cut a brilliant-cut diamond into a heart shape by removing a small amount of the material. One thing to note, though, is that “fancy” cuts like ovals, emerald, and pears are rated and evaluated differently from “rounds.” A “fancy” cut is any diamond that’s not round.

This means that it can be a bit more difficult to evaluate fancy stones compared to rounds. The process is more subjective – in other words, the overall appeal of the stone is more important than measuring things like brilliance, color, and other such metrics that are commonly used to evaluate round stones.

It’s also important to know that, since hearts are more difficult to cut than other “fancy” shapes like emeralds or pears, they are usually more expensive. This is particularly true if you’re looking for a colored diamond, or a very large diamond, or another gemstone. The larger the stone is, the more expensive it will be to have it cut into a heart shape.

However, large diamonds are usually highly-desirable for heart-shaped diamond rings and other jewelry. That’s because the larger the diamond is, the easier it will be to see the heart shape. A small heart-shaped diamond can be difficult to differentiate from other types of diamonds from a distance, while a larger stone will be more of a “statement piece.”

As a rule, we recommend that you look for the largest diamond or another gemstone you can find when planning to build a piece of custom heart-shaped jewelry. Even if you have to compromise on other things like overall clarity, metal quality for the setting, or the number or type of accent stones used in your piece, the larger heart-shaped diamond or gemstone will be worth it.

So, to sum things up, heart-shaped gemstones and diamonds have the following pros and cons.

 Pros

• Very unique design that’s perfect for engagement rings & other jewelry
• Lots of “fire” due to brilliant-cut design, making this cut very sparkly
• Perfect for integrating into multi-stone settings

Cons

• Graded on a different system than non “fancy” diamonds, making quality appraisal a bit more difficult
• More expensive than comparable fancy-cut diamonds
• Jewelers don’t often cut heart-shaped diamonds and gems, which can make them harder to find