What is a “floating” diamond?
In jewellery design, a floating diamond refers to any diamond appearing to hover within the setting—effortlessly floating within a minimal design. Typically, such designs offer minimalist aesthetics with little fuss and lacking complicated styling details.
Pros and Cons of minimalist settings
While minimalist settings provide simple, elegant placements for a diamond, many designs pose more risk during everyday wear. As a result, floating diamond necklaces, or earrings make more sense with less risk to knocks and bumps during wear.
Floating diamond engagement rings
Floating diamond engagement rings secure the diamond without the use of claws. Simple designs secure the diamond through hidden claws or tension settings. As a result, the diamond appears to float. In addition, many floating diamond engagement rings expose the stone to allow light to pass uninterrupted into the diamond.
Our favourite example comes from the Unity floating diamond ring design with an uninterrupted side view from the diamond held under tension within a mirror-polished setting.
Unity floats a diamond within a tension setting. Shown here with a 1.20 carat diamond.
Example 1. The Unity Engagement Ring
The Unity is one of our most popular solitaire engagement ring styles. Held under tension, the diamond sits between the embrace of the setting. Crafted over 5 weeks, we make each Unity engagement ring individually to order. This remains one of our most sought-after diamond engagement ring styles.
The Unity diamond engagement ring is set with a round brilliant-cut solitaire diamond. Available with a choice of natural or lab-grown diamonds.
Why choose a floating diamond setting?
Owing to the beauty and cost of a natural polished diamond, it makes sense to display the entire diamond. Smaller diamonds below 0.50 carats are sometimes obscured by claw or prong engagement ring settings. A minimalist setting enhances the size of most diamond sizes, whether they are 0.25 carats, 0.30 carats or 0.40 carats.
Example 2. The Rosebud engagement ring
Floating diamond necklaces
Many different styles exist for a floating diamond necklace or pendant design. For example, some styles might feature a diamond held within a pendant setting similar to the Unity ring design above. Our design below shows this style of setting with the diamond ‘floating’ at the heart of this drop-styled pendant design.
Advanced engineering, CAD design and a floating diamond pendant
One of our most recent bespoke necklace commissions—a floating diamond necklace—featured a deceptively simple setting. A D Flawless diamond is held under tension provided by a solid Platinum pendant setting to provide a unique yet contemporary design created for our returning client.
About Mark Johnson
Mark founded Isle of Wight jewellers Serendipity Diamonds in 2007 after a career on the polished diamonds industry. Today he works in the Serendipity showroom, helping clients with jewellery, creating handmade designs and updating their two jewellery websites SerendipityDiamonds.com and Isle-of-Wight-Jewellery.co.uk
