Heart and arrows diamond cut - Quick facts

Hearts and arrows diamond cut is a style of cut used for round brilliant diamonds that was discovered in Japan in the 1980's by the respectable Japanese jeweler while he observed the optical beauty of round brilliant diamonds through a specific scope (today called "hearts and arrows viewer").

What this smart jeweler found out was the fact that between thousands of diamonds only few of them had the inner heart and arrow pattern. This heart and arrow pattern is the result of excellent parallelism and symmetry of certain diamond. When viewed from the "crown" pattern looks like a series of eight gray arrowheads, and the "pavilion" pattern appears as eight heart shapes.

This beautiful cut means of course premium price since very few diamonds are suitable for this cut, and it takes a lot of work to achieve optimal facet placement in order to achieve perfect brilliance. Some experts say that the better definition for hearts and arrows is the visual effect that certain excellent cut grade creates in a diamond.

There is also the problem in what exactly should be labeled as the "Hearts and arrows", especially since there is no specific industry standard, which basically means that some jeweler can say how certain diamond is "Heart and Arrows" while other may say it is not.

Big number of diamonds graded by GIA as excellent often have some sort of hearts and arrows pattern when seen through a viewer, but in most cases this pattern isn't completely perfect. Perhaps the solution would be to also grade the quality of Hearts and Arrows pattern with only top graded labeled as Hearts and Arrows. This method would ensure that customer really bought Hearts and Arrows with perfect symmetry, and not some diamond with almost perfect symmetry that has price tag like the one with perfect symmetry.