Everything a serious buyer needs before spending, organised by the four pillars we work in. Written by our founders, reviewed against current laboratory standards, and free of sales language.
43 guides, free to read
Colorless diamond education: the 4Cs, fluorescence, certification and how to judge a white diamond.
Diamond carat weight explained simply is this: carat is a unit of weight, not size. But as Harsh Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP and Graduate Diamonds (GIA), will tell you, understanding what carat actually means in the real world is where most buyers can save significant money without any visual compromise.
Not all diamond certificates carry equal weight. If you are buying a natural diamond, whether it's a white solitaire, a fancy pink stone, or an antique cut, the certificate that comes with it may be the most important document in the transaction. Understanding what it actually tells you, and which lab issued it, is knowledge that can protect you from overpaying and help you buy with genuine confidence.
Ask any buyer what they want and many will say Flawless, but here is the truth: for most people, most of the time, Flawless is a certificate number that makes absolutely no visual difference to the stone in front of them. Harsh Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP and Graduate Diamonds (GIA), is direct about this.
The diamond color scale is one of the first things you need to understand before buying a natural diamond. Getting it right can save you significant money without sacrificing any visual beauty. Heer Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP, has spent years selecting natural white diamonds for bespoke fine jewelry.
Cut is the single factor that determines whether a stone blazes with light or sits there looking flat and lifeless. A D-Flawless diamond with a Poor cut grade will look noticeably duller than an H-VS2 with an Excellent cut. That is not an opinion. It is physics. Harsh Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP, has spent years selecting diamonds on the basis of how they return light.
Both reactions are understandable, and both are often wrong. Harsh Shah, Graduate Diamonds (GIA) and De Beers Institute-trained diamantaire at PASAVAJA, has spent years explaining fluorescence to buyers who arrive confused and leave with a much clearer (and sometimes more advantageous) picture of the diamond they are considering. This article covers everything you need to know: what fluorescence actually is, how GIA grades it, how it affects the way a diamond looks, and when it works in your favor.
And rightly so. You are spending a significant amount of money on something that came from deep within the earth, and you deserve to know, or at least honestly understand, where it came from and how it got to you. I'm Harsh Shah, and sourcing is at the heart of what I do at PASAVAJA every single day.
If you have come across the term "H&A" on a diamond listing and wondered what it actually means, whether it is just marketing, or whether the premium is genuinely justified, you are in the right place. Harsh Shah, Director of PASAVAJA Gems, Graduate Diamonds (GIA), with training from the De Beers Institute and Rapaport Academy, has spent years evaluating cut precision at this level.
Natural fancy color diamonds, rarity, grading and what drives value across every hue.
Most black diamond jewelry you see in stores and online is made with treated stones, not natural ones. That distinction matters more than most buyers realize, and it directly affects value, rarity, and what you are actually purchasing. Harsh Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP and Graduate Diamonds (GIA), whose expertise in fancy color diamond grading is recognized at the highest levels of the trade, is direct about this: "Most black diamond jewelry on the market is treated, not natural.
There are diamonds, and then there are blue diamonds. Even among fancy color stones, natural blue diamonds occupy a category so rare and so scientifically fascinating that Harsh Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP and one of the few diamantaires in the world whose GIA color grading discussions have contributed to actual certificate revisions, considers them among the most intellectually compelling stones he encounters.
If you have ever seen the term "chocolate diamond" on a jewelry tag and wondered what it actually means in gemological terms, you are not alone. Brown diamonds are one of the most misunderstood stones in the fancy color world, and one of the most aggressively marketed. Harsh Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP and a specialist in fancy color diamond grading, has spent years cutting through exactly this kind of marketing confusion.
In his years of sourcing rare colored diamonds, including stones he has sent back to GIA for re-examination, some of which were regraded, Harsh has encountered only a handful of verified chameleon diamonds. That alone tells you how extraordinary they are. A chameleon diamond is the only natural diamond that temporarily changes color, shifting from a stable greenish-gray or greenish-yellow to a vivid orangy-yellow when gently heated or kept in complete darkness.
They sit largely outside the mainstream conversation, and that, as Harsh Shah will tell you, is exactly what makes them interesting. Harsh Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP and one of the most recognized fancy color diamond specialists in the trade, has spent years studying the rarer corners of the color diamond market.
Natural green diamonds are among the most scientifically fascinating gemstones on earth, and one of the most misunderstood. When Harsh Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP, Graduate Diamonds (GIA) and a fancy color diamond specialist, talks about green diamonds, he always starts with the same fact: the color you see may be just a whisper-thin layer at the surface of the stone.
Most people know that yellow diamonds get their color from nitrogen. What they don't know is that orange diamonds come from nitrogen too, but in an entirely different atomic arrangement that makes them significantly rarer than yellow. Harsh Shah, Director of PASAVAJA Gems and a specialist in fancy color grading, describes orange diamonds as "one of the most technically fascinating color origins in gemology." Where his reading of a stone differs from the issued grade, he takes it back to GIA, and orange diamonds sit firmly within that level of scrutiny.
Natural pink diamonds are among the rarest gemstones on earth. If you have ever been drawn to one, that soft, impossibly warm color that no other stone can match, you are not alone. Harsh Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP and one of the world's most authoritative voices on fancy color diamonds, has spent years sourcing, grading, and advising on pink diamonds at the highest levels of the trade.
If you have ever come across a purple diamond and felt completely captivated, you are not alone. Purple diamonds sit in a rare category of fancy color stones that most people have never seen in person, and very few dealers can speak about with real authority. Harsh Shah, who has spent years studying the science and market behind fancy color diamonds at the highest level, finds purple diamonds particularly fascinating precisely because so much about them remains scientifically unsettled.
Natural red diamonds are the rarest diamonds on earth. Not just rare compared to pink or blue, but so extraordinarily scarce that fewer than 30 true natural red diamonds of any meaningful size are known to exist in the entire world. When Harsh Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems, Graduate Diamonds (GIA) and a fancy color diamond specialist whose expertise has directly contributed to GIA certificate revisions, talks about red diamonds, he describes them as "the one color that stops even experienced diamantaires in their tracks." That level of reverence says everything.
There is something about a yellow diamond that stops you in your tracks. That warm, sunlit glow, whether it is a soft lemon or a blazing canary, is unlike anything else in the natural diamond world. Harsh Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP and one of the most authoritative voices on fancy color diamonds in the trade, has spent years sourcing, grading, and guiding buyers through exactly this category.
Settings, metals and commissioning fine diamond jewelry.
Before you fall in love with a stone, the setting determines how it sits in the ring, how much light reaches it, how safe it is on your hand, and what the finished piece says about your style. Heer Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP, oversees our fine jewelry manufacturing and bespoke design.
And yet, so many buyers walk into it without a clear framework, relying on hearsay about budgets, outdated ideas about what a "good" diamond looks like, and pressure from retailers whose interests do not always align with theirs. Heer Shah, Director at PASAVAJA Gems LLP, works closely with couples navigating this decision every day.
When you are choosing a diamond ring, most people spend weeks researching the stone itself. The metal? That often gets decided in ten minutes. But the metal you choose changes everything: how your diamond looks, how the ring wears over years, how much maintenance it needs, and how much you spend.
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