Diamond Cuts and Shapes: Princess Cut Diamonds

Diamond cuts are aimed at modifying and enhancing the look of diamond crystals. There are many types of diamond cuts, like brilliant, rose, step, mixed, etc. The most popular among them are round brilliant cuts, followed by the princess cut. The characteristic features of a princess cut diamond include its square shape and the four pointed corners. A princess cut diamond displays the same brilliance as that of a brilliant cut diamond, hence it is also known as ' square modified brilliant'. Nevertheless, princess cut diamonds are very different and unique in their shape and facet arrangement.

Princess cut was developed in 1980 by Israel Itzkowitz, of the Los Angeles based Ambar Company. It took three years of research to develop this diamond cut, which became so popular that they are the most sought after ones apart from the round brilliant cuts. It is said that princess cut has the best features of both round and square cut diamonds. Princess cut diamonds display the same degree of light return as that of a brilliant cut, but have a square shape.

This cut is equally popular among the diamond cutters for its ability to retain more crystal weight. According to them, princess cut retains a major part of the rough diamond, as compared to the round brilliant cut. Almost 80% of the rough diamond is retained by the former, whereas, only 50% is retained by the latter. This makes the princess cut diamonds less expensive than the round brilliant cut ones. A rough diamond, mostly in the shape of octahedron crystals (like two pyramids joined together on the base) is used for making two princess cut diamonds, instead of one diamond in other cuts. This again means very less wastage of the original rough stone.

Princess cut diamonds are square in shape, with some of them sporting a rectangular shape and have four sharp and uncut corners. This diamond cut gives the look of an inverted pyramid to the diamond crystal. In this cut, the facets in both the crown and the pavilion are arranged in a vertical fashion, which is in contrast to that of other cuts. The length-to-width ratio of a princess cut diamond can determine its dimension. If the length-to-width ratio is anywhere between 1 and 1.05, the diamond will be square in shape and the rectangular ones have a ratio of more than 1.10. Most of the princess cut diamonds have 50 or 58 facets. In the former, 21 facets are in the crown or the top portion, 25 are in the bottom part called pavilion and 4 are in the middle part called girdle, whereas the latter has 21 in the crown, 4 in the girdle and 33 in the pavilion. However, there are also princess cut diamonds with almost 76 facets.

The light return in princess cut diamonds is more than that of the ordinary square-cut diamonds, as they have tent-like facets and vertically angled crown. It is always better to avoid those princess cut diamonds which have very large facets and shallow crown heights. These diamonds are graded for light return by Accredited Gem Appraisers (AGA), American Gem Society Laboratory (AGSL) and European Gem Laboratories - USA (EGL-USA). According to AGSL a cut grade of '0' is considered as the highest grade and as per the AGA and the EGL, 'EX' is the highest grade.