Pink Sapphire & Diamond Stepped Ring

One of London's most coveted and exciting jewellery designers, Emma Franklin studied at the world-renown Central St Martins School of Art and Design. Since graduating ten years ago, Emma has slowly and carefully built a loyal clientele worldwide who commission bespoke engagement rings and other meaningful, sentimental pieces in the designer's signature style.

Working out of her London studio, Emma builds Deco-inspired designs using the finest materials, often mixing diamonds, precious gemstones and coloured enamel resulting in completely unique and complex designs. Layered and intelligently crafted, Emma Franklin's designs are smooth and sculptural, and remarkably easy to wear.

Most commonly found in shades of blue, sapphires are also available in pretty much every other colour you can think of, with pink, yellow, peach and green being the most popular after blue. Sapphires are also very hard, with their rating on the Moh’s Scale falling just under diamonds, so they make great gemstones for daily wear on the hand.

The quality and therefore price of sapphires is based on their colour, cut and clarity, and large stones can be GIA certified as diamonds are.

The colour of the sapphire is by far the most important of all these. The shade, the tone and the depth of colour, as well as the uniformity of the colour - how well the shade is spread over the stone evenly - make a huge difference to price. Deep, dark coloured tend to hide the sparkle of the stone, so become less desirable, and sapphires that show a pure, even colour and brightness will be more expensive.

You may see sapphires where there are two different shades of colour in the stone. This is called a bi-colour sapphire, and is very common. Pure coloured sapphires with a rich, even tone in a single hue are the most conventionally desirable varieties, and therefore the most expensive. Common ‘cheaper’ sapphire rings found online will often feature lesser quality gemstones and the images may have been digitally altered, so make sure you always see a coloured gemstone in real life before buying.

Depending on the size requirements sapphires make a beautiful alternative to coloured diamonds. Yellow sapphires, white diamonds and yellow gold are currently a popular choice, but our favourite sapphire shade is a murky olive green.

Sapphires are traditionally the birthstone of September. See all Sapphire rings here.

Princess cut diamonds are a square shape when viewed from above, and taper to a point below the surface, like an inverted pyramid. They were at their most popular in the 1980s and 90s, and remain the second most popular diamond cut after the round shape. A classic style featuring a princess cut diamond would be the princess diamond in the centre, flanked by two trillion (triangular) cut diamonds, or two round cuts. Many designers featured on The Cut London have subverted these more traditional styles and are setting princess cuts in modern and unique ways.

If you like the princess cut but would like something less conventional, consider looking at the more rare carré cuts or a cushion cut for an alternative square diamond shape.

See all princess or square cut diamonds rings here.

Gold is a naturally occurring metal with a warm, glowing finish when polished, and remains the most popular choice for engagement rings due to its natural beauty and hard-wearing strength.

Pure 24k gold is naturally a soft material, and considered too soft to create jewellery with, so it is mixed with small amounts of other metals to create an alloy.

As well as increasing the durability of the gold, adding alloys can also change the colour of the gold to produce rose or white gold, for example.

18k yellow gold is made up of 75% pure gold, and 25% alloy, which would usually include silver and copper.

18k rose gold is made up of 75% pure gold, 22.2% copper, and 9.2% silver.

18k white gold is made up of 75% pure gold and 25% palladium or platinum.