how to buy right pearls

The pearls’ market is vast and versatile. You would find a wide range of cultured pearls in different qualities. For most of the people buying pearl jewellery can be a very frightening job. But at the end, we all want that it should not be devastating experience at all. With the knowledge of attributes used for the value and artistry of pearls, it would be easy for you to confidently search and find the right pearls for you. Majorly and importantly, seven factors are considered while judging the quality of pearls.

These are Lustre, Shape, Colour, Size, Surface, Matching and Nacre quality.

Lustre

Lustre principally is the sharpness and intensity of the light reflected from the surface of a pearl. Pearls with high lustre are regarded as more valuable than those with poor lustre.

Shape

An absolutely round pearl is really magnificent, but it is very rare. Most pearls are available in different variety of shapes which are also fashionable, exciting and fun to wear.

Colour

Pearls come in a vast variety of stunning and fabulous colours. Colour is generally a personal preference and it does not affect the pearl’s quality. However, natural colour pearls are usually more valuable than those that are dyed.

Size

Normally pearls are measured in millimetres. A pearl’s size often varies depending on its growth period, type and rarity. If other factors of valuing a pearl are equal, then the larger pearl is greater in value.

Surface

Majorly, four surface quality conditions are classified by GIA. They are clean, lightly spotted, moderately spotted and heavily spotted. The clean surface quality pearls are blemish-free or contain minute surface characteristics which are not easy to see. The entirely blemish-free pearls are called “spotless”.

Matching

The most important value factor especially when assessing more than two pearls is -Matching. It requires to take all the other value factors into consideration and achieve harmony in terms of lustre, size, shape, colour, surface, and nacre quality. To design an excellent matched jewel piece, the gemstone expert has to sift through numerous pearls to find the ones that are well matched which require an excessive amount of skills and labour.

Nacre Quality

The natural substance produced by a mollusc to form a pearl is called nacre. The nacre’s quality directly affects the pearl’s value, especially in the case of saltwater cultured pearls where shell bead nuclei are present. A pearl is considered more durable and lustrous with thicker nacre.

Not to be missed that sometimes pearls are intentionally mismatched to create a funky and casual look of the jewellery. As long as the desired jewellery design achieves a harmonious look, the jewellery piece can still be very enticing.