Q&A: Help Finding Three Round Diamonds For a Three-Stone Setting With a C$4,500 Budget

I’m a bit overwhelmed by how many choices there are for diamonds for the ring setting I’ve selected. It’s Blue Nile:

Three-Stone Pavé Gallery Diamond Engagement Ring

I really like the setting, although it is super expensive it seems to be the one I keep coming back to over and over…. so it must be the one.

What I’m finding is it’s very hard to find a reasonable priced high quality diamond for the center. I’d like it to be 1.00 carat, round, Ideal cut, I color or so, SI1 clarity. The clarity I do want it to be eye clean, and with ideal I’m hoping it will have lots of fire.

I’m an engineer, so my attention to detail stops me from anything blemished even though it may be eye clean…. I have a feeling I’m overthinking what the GIA report says and shows and overlooking the right stone. That’s where I’m hoping you can help me.

To make it more challenging I’m from Canada using 75 cent dollars so with a setting at $2600 CDN, and with taxes and side stones wanting to get to $8-9000 CDN delivered.

With the 1.00 carat center it lets me get two 0.3 stones which I like as I don’t like bigger side stones, 0.3 is the right size ratio for my eye. Side stones of similar quality run about $1000 CDN for the pair. So the remainder is about 4000-4500 CDN for the center, plus taxes of 11%.

I seem to end up with $5-5500 CDN stones, could you suggest something that I’m missing to get the fire I’m after at the $4-4500 CDN price point?

I appreciate your time to read through what I’m after. Your choices are what I’m looking for for sure. Very close, good balance. I really like the first center stone the most, just the price is $5,100. I like the price of the last one though, just want about bigger to get to the 1.0 carat mark. Can we get a 1.0 with the fire at that price point?

I didn’t realize how close the 0.93 size is to the 1.0. That surprised me, thanks for pointing it out. I’m learning so much. I think I’ll go with this one.

Thanks!