Q&A: Help Creating a Gorgeous Three-Stone Ring from Brian Gavin Diamonds With Up to $3,500 Budget

The way we approach diamond buying is to separate the two categories; Negative characteristics to avoid and positive characteristics to focus on. The trick is to get closer to the line (without crossing it) on color and clarity. This drops the price dramatically and so long as don’t cross the line, has zero impact on the look of the diamond. This allows you to focus on a better cut diamond, a larger diamond or to just save money.

Our #1 priority is always the cut. That’s what makes the diamond beautiful and brilliant. With Brian Gavin, you don’t have to worry about some of their diamonds being inferior to others in terms of cut as they are all equally perfect.

Re: color. Here’s where it gets interesting. Diamonds with the highest grades are a brilliant marketing strategy. Whenever we’ve secret shopped brick and mortar stores, we were always shown DEF diamonds and how they compared to other stones with lower grades (i.e. how they’d make those stones visibly yellow). First off, it’s important to know whether you are comparing apples to apples. Many stores use bogus certificates where you never know whether the, let’s say, F color is a real F color. With illegitimate certificates, it can be anywhere from an I to JK. So, of course, you have to go with the highest grades if you want a colorless diamond. That’s what they want to make you think.

Fortunately, you don’t have to pay an arm and a leg to have a beautiful white-looking diamond. When you choose a stone certified by a reliable grading lab (GIA or AGS), you can be sure that the diamond matches the quality claims. Based on our experiences, expertise and most importantly, the feedback we receive from our readers, we use the following color recommendations to ensure the colorless impression without you having to pay a huge premium: J+ color for solitaire settings (there are no additional diamonds that would make a color difference), I+ color for pave, side stone and three-stone settings, and H+ color for halo rings. I know it might all seem too low to you, but having seen hundreds of different diamonds in person (+ plenty of feedback from thousands of our readers), I stand behind these recommendations and I strongly feel that there’s no reason to pay an extra for color grades that you’d be only able to see in lab conditions. https://www.diamonds.pro/education/color/

Re: clarity grade. Again, there’s no reason to go as high as VVS (unless the diamond ends up being the best value among other stones in the inventory). I always search in the SI-IF range and pick the best/largest eye-clean stone I find. Sometimes it’s an SI, sometimes a VS or VVS happens to be cheaper than non-eye-clean SI stones. There is no rule of thumb for this. It always depends on a particular diamond and its inclusions. https://www.diamonds.pro/education/clarity/

As for the size of the stones in a three-stone ring, most people go with 1/2 or 1/3 of the center stone (but I’ve seen a three-stone ring where all three diamonds were the same size and it looked beautiful).

Feel free to send me links to any stones you find. I’m also happy to find some options myself.

The diamonds from Brian Gavin are gorgeous, there is no doubt about that. Once they are set, you are going to be in possession of one of the most brilliant rings I’ve ever helped put together. The best thing about BGD is that whichever diamond you select, they will all look great. BGD never compromise on quality.

Now, on to the sizes. This is a difficult question to answer as it’s entirely personal. Some people like to have three diamonds of similar sizes, some people try to make the center stone stand out as much as possible. So it’s up to you. What look looks better to you? There is no wrong answer.

That’s wonderful news! I’m glad I could help you create a beautiful ring.