Cut registry › Jewellery cuts › Pixel
Brilliani house design
All table, no crown.
The Pixel is a Brilliani design cut, not a buying recommendation. Its table is the entire crown. We publish the figures because a design that behaves this differently is worth measuring honestly.
The short version
The Pixel is a Brilliani house design: a rectangular stone whose table spans the full width of the crown, so there are no crown facets at all, over a deeply faceted pavilion.
It carries 32 active facets and a 100.0% table, which is the most extreme geometry in anything we publish.
Definition
Every other cut on this site distributes crown facets around a table. The Pixel does not have any. The crown is one flat plane across the whole stone, and all the faceting sits underneath, which is what produces its distinctive gridded appearance and its name.
This is a design cut rather than a light-return cut, and the figures below should be read that way. It exists to do something visual that a conventional facet plan cannot, and it pays for that in the ordinary measures. We would rather publish the whole scorecard than the flattering half of it.
It belongs to the Brilliani house designs alongside the cuts in the house cuts section, and unlike those it was not solved against the 1919 standard.
Proportions
There is no trade convention to compare against, because this is a house design rather than a market shape. The right-hand column is the stone as modelled.
| Measure | Commonly cited | Our reference stone | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outline | rectangular | rectangular | Slightly elongated. |
| Length-to-width | by design | 1.29 | A shallow rectangle. |
| Table | by design | 100.0% | The entire crown. There are no crown facets. |
| Crown angle | by design | 19.5° | Nominal, since the crown is a single plane. |
| Pavilion angle | by design | 58° | Very steep, and it is why the stone leaks. |
| Facets | by design | 32 | Counted as facets that actually reach the surface. |
No laboratory grades this, and no comparison to a market range is possible. It is a published design measured on the same protocol as everything else, which is the only claim this page makes for it.
Light
Measured on the census that runs on every cut on this site: 3,200 rays face-up, 2,200 at 20° tilt, on exact facet geometry, against T57 as the standard.
| Material | Useful light | Leak | Fire | Scintillation | Global | vs the standard |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond | 36.54% | 50.73% | 78.96 | 50.89 | 62.74 | −25.86 |
| Moissanite | 35.13% | 49.85% | 88.55 | 50.89 | 63.31 | −26.51 |
| Cubic zirconia | 40.43% | 47.06% | 86.67 | 50.89 | 66.00 | −25.78 |
| T57 standard, diamond | 92.28% | 1.88% | 78.85 | 71.82 | 88.61 | 0.00 |
The Pixel leaks 50.73% of the light entering it. That is the highest figure we publish anywhere, against the round brilliant standard’s 1.88%, and it follows directly from a 58° pavilion that sits far outside what total internal reflection wants. Useful return is 36.54% against 92.28%, for 62.74 Global against 88.61.
Its face is the most extreme we have measured. Binned by exit point, the Pixel returns 74.2% at the edges and 10.9% at the centre, a difference of -63.3 points where a round brilliant is flat. A full-width table over a steep pavilion is very nearly the textbook recipe for a window, and the measurement shows exactly that.
What it does carry is fire, at 78.96 against the standard’s 78.85, because the few large surfaces it has throw wide, well-separated spectra rather than many narrow overlapping ones.
Its tilt figure of 90.68 should not be read as stability. On a stone returning 36.54% face-up there is little left to lose.
The window, measured
Five equal bands across the stone. The centre returns 10.9% against 74.2% at the edges. For comparison, the round-brilliant control reads 99.1% against 98.1%, and the old mine cut, whose nailhead is a well-known defect, differs by only -12.7 points. This is that effect taken to its limit, and here it is deliberate.
Against the standard
Light return. 36.54% against the standard’s 92.28%. The largest gap on this site.
Leak. 50.73% against 1.88%.
Fire. 78.96 against 78.85. The one term where a crownless design is not at a disadvantage.
Sparkle. 50.89 against 71.82, on 32 facets against 57.
What it is for. Not this comparison. It is a design cut, and the round brilliant is the wrong yardstick for it in every respect except that we measure both the same way.
The baseline for all of this is the round brilliant itself. Its facet plan is set out in the anatomy of a round brilliant, and the measured standard we compare against is T57, the stone Tolkowsky published in 1919.
Materials
In moissanite the Pixel returns 35.13% for 63.31 Global, with fire at 88.55 against 78.96 in diamond. Moissanite’s higher refractive index shrinks the critical angle, so the steep pavilion costs slightly less: leak falls from 50.73% to 49.85%.
In cubic zirconia it returns 40.43% for 66.00 Global, leaking 47.06%.
See the grid pattern for yourself in the Index, which is the only way this cut makes sense.
Trade-offs
Questions
The questions buyers actually ask, answered in full. Where the answer is ours to prove, the figure is measured on the Index; where it is an established gemological fact, it is stated as one.
The Pixel is a Brilliani house design: a rectangular stone whose table spans the entire crown, so it carries no crown facets at all, over a deeply faceted pavilion. It measures 32 active facets and a 100.0% table, the most extreme geometry we publish.
Because its pavilion sits at 58°, far outside the range that keeps light inside the stone by total internal reflection, and because a full-width table gives that light an unobstructed route straight through. We measure 50.73% of leak against the round brilliant standard’s 1.88%.
It is not designed for that and we would not present it as such. It returns 36.54% of entering light against a round brilliant’s 92.28% and shows a pronounced window at its centre. It is a design cut, made for a visual effect a conventional facet plan cannot produce.
Because the alternative is publishing only the cuts that score well, which would make every other figure on this site worth less. The Pixel is measured on exactly the same protocol as the round brilliant standard and the house cuts, and the result is what it is.
A window is a region where light passes through the stone rather than returning, so it reads as a dark or transparent patch. Binned by exit point, the Pixel returns 10.9% at the centre against 74.2% at the edges, a difference of -63.3 points. A round brilliant is flat across its face.
Yes, it is a Brilliani design. It sits apart from the four cuts in the house cuts section because those were solved against Tolkowsky’s 1919 standard and this one was not: it is pursuing an appearance rather than a light-return figure.
More than you would expect, at 78.96 against the round brilliant standard’s 78.85. Its few large surfaces disperse light into wide, well-separated spectra, where many small facets would produce narrow ones that overlap and average back towards white.
Yes. It is in the Index alongside every other cut on this site, and the grid pattern it produces is the entire point of the design, so a still figure conveys very little of it.
Next
See the whole set on the jewellery cuts index, or the measured house and historic cuts in the cut registry.
Method
Monte-Carlo on exact facet geometry: 3,200 rays face-up plus 2,200 at 20° tilt, cosine-weighted from a 7° near-vertical cone. Useful light is what exits through the crown within 64° of vertical. The same protocol runs on every cut on this site, so the figures are comparable to each other.
They measure our reference geometry for the shape at the proportions listed above, not an average of stones on the market. A pixel cut to different proportions will read differently. Treat them as a like-for-like comparison between shapes, not as a grade for any individual stone.
Engine estimates, ±2 points, not lab-certified grades. We do not publish the Index symmetry axis on these pages: it scores facet regularity within each pavilion family, which is meaningful for a round brilliant and misleading for a shape whose pavilion is deliberately irregular.
50.89 here against the standard’s 71.82. The term is 100(1−e−n/45) on the count of facets that actually reach the surface, so it is a pure function of facet count and nothing else.