Bogarts Jewellers review

Bogarts understand the importance of 4Cs of diamonds and discuss it on the ‘Learn’ page of their website:

Bogarts have a big focus on lab-created, as well as natural ‘mined’ diamonds. As we all know, the biggest determinant of the cost of a diamond ring is the diamond itself and Bogarts Jewellers offers a range of carat weights from; 0.26 carat all the way to over 2 carats. This is a good range of carat weight where you can choose a carat that fits your taste and budget.

I’m a big fan of customizability, but unfortunately Bogarts don’t allow you to choose colour and clarity of the diamond in their ready-made engagement rings; they have pre-determined spec’s for the diamond colour and clarity.

If you choose well, this isn’t the biggest deal and they do offer some good combinations of color and clarity. For example, this 1 carat lab grown princess cut diamond ring offers VS2 clarity and E/F color.

This is a pretty solid set of specs – VS2 clarity is a good level to aim for as below this grade, ‘inclusions’ can sometimes be seen in the diamond, while above VS2 most diamonds will look identical to the naked eye but will be more expensive.

In their ‘made to order’ diamond rings, Bogarts does allow you to choose a diamond, but the colour and clarity are very limited as you are asked to pick from a selection of five:

While this could be helpful to help narrow your choices, the grades that are offered are lower than I would usually recommend in order to get a beautiful diamond.

For example, Bogarts offers I1 clarity which is pretty low down on the clarity scale:

An I1 diamond usually has obvious flaws that are easily seen with the naked eye, like the diamond below:

Carat weight is generally the biggest determinant of its price, but the factor that determines how much a diamond sparkles is the ‘cut’.

Diamond cut is a measure of how well the diamond has been formed and it is essential that a diamond has good proportions to reflect light; otherwise it will be dull, lifeless and unimpressive. If a diamond is too tall or too shallow, it won’t reflect much light and therefore won’t sparkle.

Understanding the cut quality of a diamond is absolutely essential to be able to understand whether it will sparkle. If you don’t know the cut quality then you may very well be wasting your money.

In the education section of their site, Bogarts Jewellers clearly explain the importance of cut:

“Not to be confused with shape (i.e. round, oval, princess), the cut of a diamond affects the brilliance, fire and scintillation; in other words, how much a diamond glitters.”

Despite knowing the importance of cut quality, Bogarts Jewellers don’t show diamond cut grade information on their product filter and product details in their ready made engagement ring diamonds. Which means it’s impossible to know whether these diamonds will sparkle beautifully, or be dull and lifeless.

In their ‘made to order’ rings, Bogarts groups together VG (very good) and excellent cut grades, which means that if you choose to add one of these to your ring, you may get one or the other:

This is definitely not ideal. A diamond with a ‘very good’ cut grade will sparkle significantly less than an ‘excellent’ cut diamond and is also worth significantly less.

As a diamond buyer, you wouldn’t want to get stuck with the lower grades and when I asked about this to their customer service using both email and messenger chat, they don’t response regarding to this matter. Not a great experience and I definitely wouldn’t want to get stuck with a ‘very good’ cut quality diamond rather than an ‘excellent cut’ .

Bogarts Jewellers diamond grading labs

Diamonds are graded on four key factors – carat, color, clarity and cut – and a host of smaller factors too. Diamonds which score higher are generally more expensive – an F color diamond will be pricier than an H color, if everything is the same.

It’s important therefore that diamond grading levels can be trusted – you don’t want to pay more for an F color diamond if it is actually an H. This is why independent diamond testing labs are important. An independent testing lab doesn’t have any incentive to say that a diamond is higher quality than it is, as they don’t make any more money if they do. In fact, if they bump up diamond quality grades, it may mean people trust them less, which might mean they make less money.

Retailers DO have an incentive to increase diamond quality scores, as it will mean that they can sell a diamond for a higher price. For this reason, I recommend that you always look for a diamond which has been graded by an independent authority – my usually recommendation is the GIA, although there are other good diamonds ‘labs’ too.

Bogarts don’t show any information about grading labs. When I ask their customer service team about it through Facebook Messenger they said “IGI for laboratory grown”.

IGI laboratory is a good grading lab too but less strict than the GIA lab. Bogarts didn’t respond to enquiries when we asked about the certificates that accompany their natural diamonds.

Ideally Bogarts would make it much easier to see the certifications that accompany their diamonds, so that engagement ring buyers can have more confidence in the quality of the diamonds.