Table Percentage
53 – 63%
Optimal range is 56–58%. Wider tables flatten the stone visually; narrower tables reduce face-up brilliance. This is less standardized than round — check the cert's actual proportion data.
The most romantic of all cuts — and the most demanding. Symmetry tolerances that other shapes quietly forgive become unmistakable in a heart. Buy it for love, but buy it right.
The heart cut is a pear shape with a cleft cut into the top lobe — simple in concept, brutally unforgiving in execution. The two lobes must mirror each other exactly; the cleft must be precisely defined; the point at the bottom must be sharp without being fragile. Any deviation reads immediately because the human eye knows intuitively what a heart is supposed to look like. That familiarity is the cut's greatest vulnerability.
Heart-shaped stones appear as early as 1463, when Louis de Bruges presented one to Charles the Bold. Mary Queen of Scots famously sent Queen Elizabeth I a heart diamond ring in 1562 as a diplomatic overture. The modern heart brilliant evolved through the 20th century as cutters refined the pear's techniques and applied them symmetrically. Today it remains among the rarest of the major fancy shapes in terms of market share — most buyers who want it, want it specifically, and accept no substitutes.
A well-cut heart performs similarly to a pear. Poorly cut examples develop a bowtie shadow across the center — a dark band visible face-up. Always evaluate with real photos, not cert data alone.