Pearl Sizes and Measurement
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Pearl Sizes

Pearls range from under 1mm to 20mm giants (mortgage your house if you want a strand of these). For round pearls, the most popular size sold today is 7mm to 7.5mm.

Generally, the larger the pearl the greater it's value but only taking into account other factors. A 7mm clean round pearl with good lustre will be more valuable than a 9mm dull baroque pearl.
A Brief History of Pearls   A BRIEF HISTORY OF PEARLS
How Pearls are Formed   HOW PEARLS ARE FORMED
Pearl Qualities and Values   PEARL QUALITIES AND VALUES
Pearl Shapes   PEARL SHAPES
Pearl Sizes   PEARL SIZES
Choosing and Caring for Pearls   CHOOSING AND CARING FOR PEARLS
8-9mm Oval Pearl
The size of a pearl is usually measured in millimetres through it's (round) diameter. For example, the 8-9mm oval pearl shown left is measured along the arrow, not it's length.
  


Pearl sizes are often given in two measurements like 5mm-5.5mm or 8mm-9mm. This means that the pearls on the strand should fall within these measurements - especially good quality round pearls. Although a half millimetre sounds tiny, the human eye is very good at picking out small differences.

The images below compare sizes for two of the most popular shapes of pearl...
Round Pearl Sizes

Left: Round Pearls

4.0 - 5.0mm
6.0 - 7.0mm
7.0 - 8.0mm
8.0 - 9.0mm
9.0 - 10.0mm

Right: Oval Pearls

6.0 - 6.5mm
6.5 - 7.0mm
7.0 - 7.5mm
7.5 - 8.0mm
8.0 - 8.5mm

 Oval Pearl Sizes


The World's Largest Pearls

The most famous pearl is the 'Hope Pearl' (named after it's owner, Henry Philip Hope) which is displayed in the Natural History Museum in London. The Hope Pearl was discovered in the early 19th Century and weighs about 90 grams.

More recently, a silver coloured pearl (shown right) weighing a whopping 170 grams was found on the seabed off an island of Myanmar (Burma).
The world's largest natural pearl
 

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