The Decision Nobody Tells You to Make
A one-carat center stone in a three-stone setting is not the same ring as a one-carat solitaire, and the difference isn't the carat weight. It's the two stones nobody spends any time choosing. Most people pick the center diamond and treat the side stones as an afterthought — two smaller stones, roughly matched, whatever comes with the setting. Then the ring arrives and it looks nothing like the picture in their head. The side stones are the reason. They control the width of the ring on the finger, the way light moves across it, whether a wedding band will sit flush against it, and how the whole piece reads from three feet away.
I make these rings by hand in my Woodside workshop, one at a time, and the side stone conversation is the one I have most often with couples who thought they'd already made their decision.
Why the Side Stones Carry More Weight Than Their Carat Suggests
The side stones extend the visual footprint of the design along the finger, which is why a three-stone ring almost always reads larger than its center stone alone would suggest. Two 0.35ct side stones add only two-thirds of a carat on paper, but they can add nearly half an inch of visual length to the ring's silhouette.
That extension is the whole point of the style, and it's also where the choice gets consequential. The shape of those side stones determines whether the extension reads as soft and continuous or as sharp and architectural. It determines whether the eye moves smoothly from stone to stone or stops at each one. Two rings with identical center stones and identical total carat weight can look like they came from different centuries depending on what sits on either side.
The Six Shapes That Actually Get Used
There are dozens of diamond shapes. Only a handful work as side stones, because a side stone has a job that a center stone doesn't: it has to flatter something else without competing with it.
Round Brilliant Sides
The round brilliant is the default for a reason. It has the most facets of any shape, which means it throws light in every direction, and it has no orientation — a round stone can't be set crooked, and it can't develop the subtle asymmetry that pointed shapes sometimes reveal after years of wear. Round sides give you a soft, continuous line. The eye travels from side stone to center stone to side stone without catching.
This is the safest choice, and I don't mean that dismissively. If the person wearing the ring hasn't expressed a strong style preference, round sides are the shape least likely to feel like a decision they have to live with. They also pair with the widest range of wedding bands, because a round side stone sits with a gentle curve that most straight bands can accommodate. You can see the effect on the round three-stone ring with matched 0.35ct sides.
The trade-off is that round sides are the least distinctive option. A round-and-round three-stone ring is a beautiful, classic object, and it will look like a great many other beautiful, classic objects.
Pear Side Stones
Pear sides are the shape I recommend most often to people who want the three-stone silhouette without the three-stone predictability. A pear has a rounded end and a pointed end, and how you orient those points changes the ring entirely. Points facing outward, away from the center stone, and the ring stretches along the finger — elongating, dramatic, and noticeably longer than a round-sided equivalent at the same carat weight. Points facing inward, and the side stones seem to gesture toward the center, framing it.
I set pear sides with the points facing outward on the Astoria, paired with a marquise center. The marquise and the pear share a pointed geometry, so the three stones read as one continuous shape rather than three separate objects. That's the effect worth paying for.
The honest caution: a pear's point is its vulnerable spot. A well-made setting protects it with a V-shaped prong that caps the tip rather than pinching it. If you're looking at a pear-sided ring anywhere and the point sits exposed with a standard round prong beside it, that's a ring that will chip. I cap every pear tip. It's a small amount of extra work that determines whether the ring survives a decade of ordinary life.
Marquise Side Stones
A marquise is pointed at both ends, which makes it the most elongating shape available and the most assertive. Marquise sides create a ring that is unmistakably deliberate — a shape from the Art Deco vocabulary, geometric and confident. Set alongside a round or oval center, marquise sides create a strong contrast between the soft center and the sharp flanks.
Marquise sides carry the same tip-protection requirement as pears, doubled, since each stone has two points. They also sit relatively flat and wide, which means the ring occupies more finger real estate than the carat weight suggests. For someone with shorter fingers who wants the elongating effect, that's the entire appeal. For someone who wants a ring that disappears when they're not looking at it, it isn't.
Tapered Baguette Sides
The tapered baguette is a long rectangular step-cut stone, wider at the end nearest the center stone and narrowing as it moves down the band. It's the most architectural option. Step cuts don't sparkle the way brilliant cuts do — they produce broad flashes of light rather than fine scintillation, which reads as clean and restrained rather than fiery.
This is the choice for someone who finds most engagement rings too busy. A tapered baguette three-stone ring has a mid-century quality, a sense of drafted lines rather than accumulated sparkle. It also produces the flattest profile of any side stone option, which makes wedding band pairing straightforward.
Step cuts are unforgiving of inclusions in a way brilliant cuts are not — the open facets show everything. Every tapered baguette I set is a Lab-Grown Diamond in VS clarity or better for that reason.
Trapezoid Sides
Trapezoids are geometric, angular, and the least common option on this list. They sit flush against the center stone with a flat edge, creating an almost seamless join. Where a round side stone leaves a small visual gap between itself and the center, a trapezoid closes it. The result is a ring that reads as a single sculpted unit.
Trapezoid sides suit emerald and radiant centers particularly well, since the shared straight edges create a coherent geometry. They're an unusual choice, and unusual is the point.
Half-Moon Sides
A half-moon is exactly what it sounds like: a stone with one straight edge and one curved. Set with the straight edge against the center stone, it gives you the flush join of a trapezoid with a softer outer silhouette. It splits the difference between the geometric options and the rounded ones.
How Side Stone Shape Changes Your Wedding Band
This is the part almost nobody considers until the band is being ordered, and by then the engagement ring is finished.
When You Need a Contoured Band
Side stones that extend outward and downward along the band — pears with outward points, marquise, long tapered baguettes — occupy the space where a wedding band wants to sit. A straight band pushed up against that kind of ring will either leave a visible gap or sit at an angle. The solution is a contoured band, shaped to nest against the specific profile of the engagement ring, and it's a solution that works beautifully as long as you plan for it.
Side stones with a compact footprint — round sides, half-moons, short trapezoids — generally accept a straight band without modification.
I bring this up during the engagement ring conversation rather than a year later, because the answer is easy when you know the question is coming and expensive when you don't. If a couple wants a straight plain band eventually, that's worth knowing before I cut the wax.
What I'd Actually Tell You to Do
If the ring is a surprise and you're working from limited information about their taste, choose round sides. They're the least likely to be wrong and the easiest to live with.
If you know they gravitate toward things that look intentional rather than traditional — if their apartment has clean lines, if they wear architectural jewelry, if "classic" isn't the compliment they're after — look at tapered baguettes or trapezoids.
If they want the ring to look as large as possible for the budget, pear or marquise sides with the points oriented outward will give you the most visual length per carat of any option here. You can compare the built examples in the three-stone collection.
And if you're drawn to something on this list that I haven't already built, that's what the custom work is for. Every ring I make starts as a CAD model I develop from a conversation, and I'd rather build the ring someone actually wants than sell them the closest thing on the shelf. There is no shelf. Each piece is made after it's ordered, in the workshop, by me.
A Note on the Diamonds
Every stone in the three-stone rings I make — center and sides — is a Lab-Grown Diamond, IGI-certified, DEF color and VS clarity or better. The certificate travels with the ring. Set in solid 14K gold, never plated, never hollow.
Made to order in Woodside, Queens. Lifetime warranty against manufacturing defects.
Dimitrios Koukoulis is the founder and goldsmith behind Black Pearl of Queens, where he designs and hand-finishes every piece in a Woodside, Queens workshop.
