1. Don’t skimp on cut.
A great cut gives you the sparkle you actually want, while well-balanced proportions help you get the most visible size from your carat weight. Paying for extra weight hidden deep underneath the diamond? No thanks.
2. Be strategic about color and clarity. An eye-clean diamond with a lower clarity grade can look just as flawless to the naked eye as one with a much higher grade. And a G or H color diamond can still look bright and white without the price tag of a D color grade. That’s money you could put toward a larger stone.
3. Shop just below the big carat milestones.
Diamonds weighing 0.90 or 1.90 carats can look almost identical to their 1 or 2-carat counterparts, but sometimes come with a noticeably smaller price tag.
4. Go lab-grown. If you’re after a bigger diamond for your budget, lab-grown diamonds are an easy way to get there. They’re real diamonds with the same sparkle and durability as natural diamonds, but at a much lower price. That leaves a lot more room in your budget for extra carats.
5. And if you’re still deciding on a shape, you already know where we’d send our bigger-is-better friends first: marquise, moval, oval, and pear.
For more ways to make your diamond budget work harder, plus photos of different carat sizes on actual hands, check out our
diamond size guide.
