H. Samuel review

As you probably know, the biggest determinant of the cost of a diamond ring is the diamond itself and H. Samuel offers a range of carat weight from; 0.01 carat all the way to over 1 carat.

The largest choice is from 0.25 to 0.74 carats, which is a good range as you can get a ring that looks a significant size without paying overly-high prices:

But carat is just one of the ‘Four Cs’, with the other three being Cut, Colour and Clarity. Some people also include ‘Certification’ as a fifth C, and we will discuss the importance of this later.

Unlike some jewellers, the H. Samuel website’s product filter only allows you to choose by carat – it doesn’t allow you to select cut, colour or clarity. This makes it tricky to narrow the selection to diamonds with particular quality characteristics, if this is something that is important to you as a diamond ring buyer (and it should be!)

However, H. Samuel does have a feature that allows you to create your own ring, although it’s a little hidden away on one of the menus.

Using this feature, you can select a ring style, then a centre diamond shape and then select the diamond quality. As mentioned above, H. Samuel allows you to create your own dream engagement ring in just four steps, the third of which is to choose the diamond colour and clarity:

As you can see, only 5 colours are available from F to J. G or H are good colours, above this level and the diamond doesn’t look much whiter, but is much more expensive, below this level and the diamond can look yellow (which most people don’t like).

When it comes to clarity, H. Samuel offers five choices: VS1, VS2, SI1, SI2 and I1.

VS2 Clarity means that diamonds are “clear to the eye” and the inclusion is invisible while I1 clarity diamonds actual have significant flaws which can usually be seen. I’d usually recommend sticking to VS1 or VS2 clarity diamonds, to ensure that no flaws are visible in your diamond.

In other rings, H. Samuel also have diamonds at I3 clarity:

I3 is off the scale for low clarity and the diamond will be extremely negatively impacted by flaws. By offering such a flawed diamond, H. Samuel are able to offer 1 carat diamonds at prices that seem low. However, they are actually poor value as the diamond will look so flawed.

H. Samuel and diamond cut

A diamond’s 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, H. Samuel clearly explain the importance of cut:

“The cut of the diamond can affect the way the light catches the stone, affecting the way it sparkles. The way a diamond is cut affects three important diamond-attributes” and “A perfectly cut diamond will allow rays of light from all sides to bend towards the centre of the stone, and be reflected back through the top of the stone in a burst of rainbow coloured light. Diamonds with a poorer cut will allow light to ‘leak’ or ‘escape’ through the base or sides of the stone.”

Despite this, H. Samuel don’t show diamond cut grade for the diamonds on their website, even in their diamond specification section for each stone.

This means that despite knowing that diamond cut is the most important factor in determining how much a diamond sparkles, they don’t give customers this information!

When I asked H. Samuel about this on their live chat, they said:

“Not all information is advertised on some of the items that we stock I’m afraid” and when I asked why; she continued “This is just a decision that has made by our marketing team”.

The lack of information on cut quality is a huge red flag for H. Samuel. Many other jewellers do include diamond cut quality on their websites – some of which make it one of the filters on their search tool and some of them in their diamond specification.

Not knowing the diamond cut grade for a diamond means that it could be a very low cut grade and therefore appear dull, with little or no sparkle. Not good.

H. Samuel diamond grading labs

As mentioned earlier, while there are the 4Cs of diamonds, there is a fifth C which is also extremely important: certification.

‘Certification’, also known as ‘grading’ is when a diamond is assessed for Cut, Colour, Clarity and Carat weight, with these recorded on a certificate which is totally unique for each diamond. A diamond certifiate acts like a passport which tells you all about your diamond’s credentials and should give you piece of mind that you are actually buying what you think you are buying..

Diamonds which score higher in their grading report are generally more expensive – an F colour diamond will be pricier than an H colour, 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 colour 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 because they have the strictest standards, so you will be sure that you are getting the quality that you are paying for.

However, H. Samuel’s diamonds aren’t graded by an independent lab – they’re inspected by H. Samuel’s own internal team:

This is another red flag for me for H. Samuel – I wouldn’t rely on an assessment of a diamond by an organisation which has an incentive to increase the quality score and therefore make more money from selling that stone.