Choosing an engagement ring is both exciting and overwhelming. For many brides-to-be, it’s the most expensive piece of jewelry they own.

Combine the sentimental and monetary factors and you can feel a lot of pressure to pick the perfect ring.

One of the major decisions you’ll make when engagement ring shopping is what diamond shape to buy (assuming you’re going with a traditional diamond ring!).

Sure, you definitely need to like the shape you choose, but there are quite a few other factors to keep in mind that affect the price, longevity and overall appearance of your ring.

The Difference Between Diamond Shape and Cut

We could explain how shape and cut differ, but our friends at The Knot already do a great job putting it in simple terms:

“While you must cut a diamond to make a shape, the shape is essentially the overall geometry or form of the diamond (round, square, etc.), while the cut is the diamond’s facets and proportions — the things that give diamonds their brilliance and fire.” (The Knot)

Some diamond shapes are easier to cut well, allowing some to sparkle more easily than others.

Popular Diamond Shapes

Getting the Best Diamond Cut

There are two general types of diamond cuts: brilliant and step. Brilliant cuts have facets that are mostly triangular or kite shaped and radiate from the center. Step cuts have long, narrow facets in rows that produce a “hall-of-mirrors” effect.

Brilliant Cut Diamonds

Reflected by its overwhelming popularity, a round diamond is the ultimate in brilliance. Due to the ability of its 58 facets to reflect light, the sparkle factor of a round brilliant is nearly unmatched.

While the princess cut doesn’t direct light back to the center quite as efficiently as a round, it comes the closest to achieving a similar level of fire and brilliance.

Radiant diamonds were actually the first square cut with a brilliant facet pattern, before the princess debuted. They round out the top three shapes for consistently achieving maximum brilliance.

Oval, marquise and pear diamond shapes are harder to cut well due to the “bow-tie effect.” With all fancy-cut diamonds, there’s a visible area that sucks light into the center of the stone.

While this effect is harder to avoid with these elongated shapes, very well-cut ovals, marquises and pears can be very flattering.