Carat Weight

Unlike gold where carat refers to metal purity, in diamonds as in all precious stones carat refers to the weight. The word carat originated in past methods of weighing diamonds. One carat was the equivalent to one seed from a carob tree. This has since been standardised and one carat is now equal to 0.2 grams (one fifth of a gram).

One carat is divided into 100 'Points' so that a diamond of 25 points is described as a quarter of a carat or 0.25 carats.