My suggestion to you would be if you aren't feeling like slogging through HCA scores on unbranded diamonds of various quality trying to find that lucky "needle" in the haystack, would be to go with a well known super ideal vendor and stick to their "in house" stones (not virtual inventory) which will be stones they cut for their brand. Whiteflash probably has one of the best upgrade policies ever, so unless you are looking for something super specific (like a stone with Fluorescence like I was) then their A Cut Above stones are fantastic- truly stunning. Brian Gavin was part of their original design team before he went his own way, so the cut proportions on WF's and BG's stones will generally be similar, but I like BG's Blue line because I am fascinated with fluorescence and he's a super nice guy. Anything you get from BG "in house" stones (Black, Blue and Signature) are all going to have ideal proportions, but only the signature and black line are cut specifically to get H/A AND optimum proportions. For me, it was worth it to just KNOW the performance was going to be good, and not have to crunch HCA like we did on my original e-ring (even though I ended up with a winner- it was WEEKS of buy and return work to get there and that is not worth it to me....)
And on an ideal cut diamond, I suspect you can deal with more color than you think. They tend to face up whiter because the ideal cut can mask color. My BGD Blue, for instance, is a K with medium fluor. (The picture I posted of the modern stone with the 5 stone band accent. The stones in the 5 stone are H/I) A lot of people THINK they can't take color, because they go to a mall store and look at an uncerted stone with an "in house" grade of H or something like that and it looks yellow because 1) it is poorly cut and 2)the in house grade is WAY off and if it were sent to GIA it would come back as something like an L/M or lower. Caution is always advised when assessing your color tolerance and reading what is on the "label". If it hasn't been graded by GIA or AGS- take it with a grain of salt.
