Crescent Gold & Diamonds Jewellers review

Crescent Gold & Diamonds make it easy for you to choose a diamond by diamond colour and clarity on their website:

Crescent Gold & Diamonds offers a huge range of colours of diamond which is good, the most commonly offered are ‘near colourless’ (GHIJ). G and H in the ‘near colourless’ range are good colours – they should look white, without being as expensive as other diamonds higher up in the colour grade range. At I and J levels, most people can start to see some yellow tones, which are generally viewed as undesirable.

The most common clarity that Crescent Gold & Diamonds are I1, I2 and I3 which are at the very bottom of the diamond clarity scale:

Diamonds in this range have inclusions which are very easy to see with the naked eye and which severely impact the beauty.

I1 to I3 clarity diamonds are very low quality which we don’t recommend because they have obvious inclusions which can be easily seen by the naked eye. Some inclusions in I diamonds can also pose a significant durability risk to the stone.

By offering diamonds with such low clarity grades, Crescent Gold & Diamonds is able to offer 1 carat diamonds at prices that seem low, but actually offer poor value as the diamond will look so flawed.

We normally recommend VS2 and above because if a diamond is less than a VS2, ‘inclusions’ can sometimes be seen in the diamond that people might not want to see.

While clarity is a measure of the inclusions, or flaws, of a diamond, it’s the diamonds ‘cut’, or proportions that determines how much it will sparkle.

Diamond cut is essentially a measure of how well the diamond has been shaped 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.

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 Crescent Gold & Diamonds website under ‘Cut’, they discuss the importance of diamond cut:

Despite knowing the importance of ‘cut’ quality, Crescent Gold & Diamonds doesn’t allow you to select ‘cut’ in their product filter and diamond details, although it can be seen in the product details of some rings.

When I asked them about this through email, I received an email back from the service centre of their parent company Charm Diamonds, who said; “Cut grade is not commonly information customers ask for but should you have a particular piece in mind I would be happy to request the information on your behalf”

Crescent Gold & Diamonds diamond grading labs

Diamonds are graded on four key factors – carat, colour, clarity and cut – and a host of smaller factors too.

Diamonds which score higher are generally more expensive – an F colour diamond will be pricier than an H colour, if everything also is the same.

It’s important therefore that diamond grading levels can be trusted – you don’t want to pay more for diamond that has been graded as an F colour but 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 that people use their service less and the make less money. Being able to rely on the grading scores from independent labs is a key part of comparing diamonds across retailers – you know that you are comparing like-for-like.

On the other hand, 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.

Crescent Gold & Diamonds doesn’t show information about diamond grading labs on their website. When I asked about this via email, I was told that “We use independent laboratories to grade and certify our diamonds such as IGI, Gemscan, Amsterdam and GSI.”

IGI has an OK reputation within the industry, although the others less so. However, none of these labs are as rigorous as GIA, which means that a diamond that is graded as an F colour, may actually be a G, H or I instead. Not ideal.