Multistone Ring Settings

A medium-sized full round cut brilliant diamond set in a solitaire white gold setting. That previous sentence could probably describe the most common and most obvious compilation of choices that first-time diamond buyers come up with. Such a diamond ring might actually be quite astonishing - however, to some people "common" and "obvious" also means "boring".

These are the people who will go for the fancy shapes, the fancy colors and the interesting settings, too. If you are one of them, you should read on - we are going to discuss the different options you have when you would like to choose a diamond ring featuring more than one gem stones.

The Most Basic Deviation: Pavement Stones

If you would like to experiment a little with your ring's setting but do not want to go extreme, including some pavement stones on your ring might be your optimal choice.

These usually smaller stones are installed in bar or channel settings instead of the full prong setting: that way they are not surrounded by prongs, only kept in their place by a relatively small number of external parts.

More Bling for Your Buck: Going for Pave Rings

Are you ready to wear something really bold, a true attention grabber? Pave (pronounced pah-vay) diamonds are small diamonds, weighing only around two points, set one next to the other in relatively large numbers. Such a combination of diamonds apparently creates a coherent shiny surface.

Since the pricing mechanism of diamonds is not linear, twenty-five pave diamonds each weighing two points will definitely cost less than a half carat stone of the same material and cut quality.

Click the images to view the ring in more details...

Exquisite Choices: Multi-Stone Tension Set Rings

Waiting for prongs to keep your diamonds in their place is so last century - you want to create tension and appreciation anywhere you show up? Tension cut might be it for you: this exclusive diamond setting style utilizes the actual physical tension from the open ends of a cut band. This force will pinch the diamond to be kept in place and hold it in a unique environment that is rich of light.

Creating rings that feature more than one diamonds that are tension-set is impossible. However, combinations of channel set diamonds and tensions set diamonds exist. That is, a tension set main feature ring plus one or more smaller channel set diamonds make up the combination that you are most likely to end up with. In such configurations you might even have some fun by forgetting symmetry: installing two small diamonds on one side of your tension-set stone can create a stunning visual effect.

Some of the Most Common Pitfalls And Misbeliefs

There are two very important things that you need to pay attention to when you are dealing with multi-stone rings. First of all, you should have a clear understanding of the difference between "carat weight" and "carat total weight".

To sum it up: "carat weight" stands for the weight of an individual gem stone, whereas "carat total weight" represents the total weight of gem stones featured on a piece of jewelry. Generally, jewelers will not try to fool you with this, but you might end up fooling yourself, so you might want to remember the difference.

Apart from this small pitfall, we should mention the misbelief that people have regarding the security of tension-set diamonds. For understandable reasons, we tend to believe that tension-set stones fall out of their settings easily.

Quite surprisingly, studies have shown that rings using prongs are more likely to get damaged and lose their feature stones than tension-set rings. In the end, a tension-set ring really is a safe purchase - it is not the whisper of ancient gods that keeps the gem stones in place, but serious engineering.