How do I inspect a sapphire sent to me by Brilliyond?

At Brilliyond, we understand that choosing the right sapphire for your engagement ring is a deeply personal decision. We ship sapphires to customers so you can inspect them in person before finalising your ring. Here are the guidelines to follow when handling and evaluating your sapphire.

Handling the Sapphire

Sapphires are one of the hardest gemstones on earth, so you will not scratch or damage them easily. However, they are very small, and the biggest risk is accidentally dropping and losing them.

Please follow these handling tips:

• Inspect the sapphire indoors, over a clean surface.
• Avoid inspecting it outdoors, your backyard lawn is the worst place because if it falls into the grass you may never find it.
• Avoid handling it over tile, stone, or concrete flooring. Although sapphires are hard, a strong impact on a hard surface can cause chips or cracks.
• Ideally, inspect it over a table with a soft towel or microfibre cloth underneath.
• Always handle it gently with your fingertips, no tools or tweezers are required.

Lighting Conditions

Sapphires can look very different depending on the light source. Customers often judge them too quickly after opening the parcel under dim indoor lights, this does not show the sapphire accurately.

For the best and most accurate colour:

• Use natural daylight.
• Stand near a bright window.
• Hold the sapphire between yourself and the window, your back should face the window, and the sapphire should be facing the light.
• Do not hold the sapphire towards the window (i.e., with the window behind it), as this will wash out the colour.
• Observe the sapphire in several lighting conditions:
  • Bright daylight
  • Indoor white lighting
  • Soft warm lighting (evening)

This helps you understand how the colour behaves naturally.

What to Look For

Sapphire quality involves many technical factors, colour zoning, inclusions, tone, saturation, hue, clarity, cut, luster, and more. These are complicated to evaluate without gemmological training, and our pricing already reflects the technical grade of each stone.

What we want you to focus on during your inspection is simple:

• Do you love the colour when you look at it?
• Does it appeal to you emotionally?

Sapphires are not judged the way diamonds are. It is perfectly fine, and expected to choose the sapphire based on how much you like it rather than trying to analyse gemmological details.

Returning the Sapphire

Please keep all packaging and return the sapphire in the same condition it was received. When you post it, please visit a post office , lodge the parcel and keep the lodgement receipt. Do not drop the parcel to post boxes.