What Is a Princess Cut Diamond? The Complete Guide

Start with the outline, because that is what names the cut. A princess cut is a square, or close to it, with four corners that come to sharp, uncropped points. Look straight down at it and you see a clean four-sided silhouette. That is the whole visual identity of the shape: a square that sparkles like a round.

The princess is a modern cut, developed by diamond cutters in the second half of the twentieth century, and it became one of the most popular square shapes for engagement rings because it packs round-brilliant fire into a geometric outline. Three things are true of every correctly cut princess, and worth stating plainly:

If a square stone has softly rounded corners, it is a cushion. If the corners are neatly clipped at an angle, it is a radiant or an asscher. The princess is the square with the points left sharp. For where this cut sits among all the common outlines, see our diamond shapes guide.

The outline makes it a square. The faceting is what makes it sparkle. A princess is a brilliant cut, which means its facets are arranged to bounce light back to your eye as a lot of small, bright, fast flashes rather than as broad mirror-like reflections. That is why a princess reads as fiery and lively, and why it is the closest square relative of the round brilliant in the way it handles light.

Inside a princess you will usually find rows of chevron-shaped facets, commonly two, three, or four chevrons per side. This is a real, visible difference from stone to stone: more chevrons tend to produce smaller, crisper flashes, while fewer chevrons give bolder, broader flashes. Neither is better as a rule, it is a matter of the look you want, so the best move is to view stones in person and pick the flash pattern you prefer.

This is the opposite of a step cut. An emerald or asscher uses long, parallel facets that produce a glassy, hall-of-mirrors flash and reward very high clarity. A princess breaks the light into many small pieces instead, which is what gives it its scintillation and, as the next section explains, what lets it hide small inclusions.

The sharp corners are the best and the most vulnerable thing about a princess cut. They give the shape its crisp geometry, but a sharp corner is a thin, exposed point of the crystal, and an exposed point is where a diamond is most likely to chip if it takes a hard knock. Diamond is the hardest material used in jewelry, but hardness is resistance to scratching, not to impact, so a corner still needs looking after.

The fix is in the setting, and it is standard practice. A princess is almost always set so that each corner is covered, most often with V-prongs (also called chevron prongs) that wrap and shield the four points, or in a bezel or half-bezel that encloses the edge. When you look at a princess ring, the practical thing to confirm is simple: are the corners actually protected. Setting choice matters more for a princess than for a round, because a round has no corners to guard in the first place.

Because the brilliant faceting scatters light into many bright flashes, small inclusions are harder to spot face up in a princess than in a step cut of the same stone. The sparkle gives the eye a lot to look at, and busy light patterns break up any single small feature. In practice that means you can often find an eye-clean princess a grade or two below the very top of the clarity scale, which is where a lot of the value in this cut lives.

Two caveats keep you honest. First, "eye-clean" is about what you can see without magnification, so read the plotted clarity diagram on the report and, ideally, look at the actual stone. For how the clarity grades relate to what the eye can see, see our note on VVS versus VS diamonds. Second, pay special attention to any inclusion sitting near a corner, since the corners are the structurally stressed part of the stone; an inclusion right at a point is worth a closer look. When in doubt, learn to read the grading report rather than trust the grade letter alone.

Carat is weight, not size, and a princess spends its weight a little differently from a round. Princess cuts are generally cut fairly deep, which means a good share of the carat weight sits below the girdle where you do not see it from the top. The result is that a one carat princess tends to face up a touch smaller than a one carat round, and noticeably smaller than a long, shallow shape of the same weight. For how the shapes rank on visible size, see which diamond shape looks biggest, and for choosing a weight, our lab grown diamond carat guide.

That depth is also tied to the cut's reputation for value. A princess is cut to keep a high share of the rough crystal, historically as much as two princess cuts from a single octahedral rough, so less of the raw material is lost in cutting. Combined with the fact that Lab Grown Diamonds broadly trade well below mined stones of the same specifications (Source: StoneAlgo, 2026), a princess is one of the more efficient ways to get a large, bright, square stone. A diamond is a love piece, not an investment, so read value as sparkle and size per dollar today, not as anything that appreciates later.

The four square-ish cuts get mixed up constantly, and the fastest way to tell them apart is to look at two things: the corners and the faceting. The corners tell you which shape it is; the faceting tells you how it sparkles.

In one line each: choose a princess for the most square-outline sparkle with sharp corners; a cushion for soft, antique romance; a radiant for princess-style brightness without vulnerable points; and an asscher for a clean, glassy, stepped look. Cushion and radiant share the princess's brilliant faceting, so they sparkle in the same family; the asscher is the outlier, a step cut that trades scintillation for a calm hall-of-mirrors effect and rewards high clarity. If the terms themselves are the confusion, our note on diamond cut versus shape untangles why "cut" and "shape" get used interchangeably.

A princess cut tends to suit someone who wants a square silhouette with real sparkle, and who likes a look that is modern and clean while still reading as classic. It is a strong pick for a buyer who wants a large, bright stone for the money, since the cut's high rough yield and brilliant faceting stretch a budget without dropping into a dull-looking stone. It also flatters a wide range of hands, and its geometry pairs cleanly with everything from a plain solitaire to a channel or halo setting.

The one thing to be comfortable with is the corners. If you want the sparkle of a square stone but would rather not think about protecting points, a radiant gives you a similar brightness with clipped, sturdier corners, and a cushion gives you a softer outline with no sharp points at all. If the crisp geometry of true right-angle corners is exactly what you want, that is the princess, and the setting takes care of the rest.

Stienhardt is a New York City jeweler that sources Lab Grown Diamonds and hand-sets and finishes them in NYC, selling direct. A Lab Grown Diamond is a real diamond, identical in material and hardness to a mined one, so a princess cut in a Lab Grown Diamond behaves exactly like a mined princess: same brilliance, same sharp corners, same care in the setting. We own and inspect the stones we sell and hand you the independent grading report behind each one, rather than drop-ship it sight unseen.

Viewings are by appointment, and because a princess lives or dies on its corners and its faceting, seeing the stone and the setting in person is worth it. Whichever square cut you land on, the same advice holds: read the graded report, confirm the shape term and measurements, and check that the corners are protected. A nickname is marketing. The report is fact.

If you would rather judge a stone in person, we show by appointment in New York. Book a viewing.