Halo Style Engagement Rings: Beauty and Innovation

Diamond jewelry has been around since we first discovered how beautiful a diamond could look. And while styles have come and gone through the centuries, they've changed at a somewhat glacial pace. Huge innovations in design aesthetics don't come along very often.

Which is just one of the things that makes the halo style engagement ring so impressive.

Halo engagement ring settings take one of the most stunning characteristics of diamonds -- namely, their sparkle -- and push it to the next level. Picture the main stone of a ring, rising solemnly above the metal setting, and now picture that same stone surrounded on all sides by a "halo" of smaller stones, a sea of shine, a veritable carpet of sparkle.

The halo style engagement ring is actually a combination of styles -- the solitaire and the pave (pronounced "pah-vay"). Pave settings place tiny diamonds so close together that they appear so be one continuous sheet of pure brilliance, sometimes covering the metal of a setting and making it appear as though the ring itself weremade of diamonds. The smaller stones are usually held in place by prongs, which, if set in a white gold, platinum, or palladium setting, are practically invisible amid the overwhelming sparkle of the diamonds.

This pave setting, when placed in a halo around a main diamond, blurs the edges of the larger stone, blending it seamlessly into the brilliance of the smaller diamonds and making the large stone actually appear larger -- up to 30% larger, in fact.

If you've never seen one in person, you owe it to yourself to stop in and see what all the fuss is about. Until you've seen it with your own eyes, mere words can't do it justice. The halo style engagement ring is a truly innovative and worthy addition to the world of diamond jewelry, and will likely be around for centuries to come.