Excellent: Our most brilliant cut, representing roughly the top 1% of IGI diamond quality based on cut. The highest grades of polish and symmetry allow it to reflect even more light than the standard ideal cut.

Ideal cut: Represents roughly the top 3% of AGS diamond quality based on cut. Reflects nearly all light that enters the diamond. An exquisite and rare cut.

Very good cut: Represents roughly the top 15% of diamond quality based on cut. Reflects nearly as much light as the ideal cut, but for a lower price.

Good cut: Represents roughly the top 25% of diamond quality based on cut. Reflects most light that enters. Much less expensive than a very good cut.

Fair cut: Represents roughly the top 35% of diamond quality based on cut. Still a quality diamond, but a fair cut will not be as brilliant as a good cut.

Poor cut: Diamonds that are generally so deep and narrow or shallow and wide that they lose most of the light out the sides and bottom. Diamond & Cutters of Western New York Fine Jewelry does not carry diamonds with cut grades of poor.

Clarity is a measure of the number and size of the tiny imperfections that occur in almost all diamonds. Many of these imperfections are microscopic, and do not affect a diamond's beauty in any discernible way. Much is made of a diamond's clarity, but of the Four Cs, it is the easiest to understand, and, according to many experts, generally has the least impact on a diamond's appearance. Clarity simply refers to the tiny, natural imperfections that occur in all but the finest diamonds.