FANCY COLOR DIAMONDS
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In diamonds, rarity equals value. With most diamonds, their value is based on the absence of color, because colorless diamonds are the most rare. With fancy color diamonds, the rarest and most valuable colors are saturated pinks, blues and greens. Even very slight color differences can have a big impact on value.
Compared to fancy yellows and browns, diamonds with a noticeable hint of any other hue are considerably more rare. Even in light tones and weak saturation, as long as they show color in the face-up position, they qualify as fancy colors. Red, green, and blue diamonds with medium to dark tones and moderate saturation are extremely rare. |
THE COLORS
Diamonds with red or reddish colors are extremely rare and expensive. Pure pinks are more popular than diamonds that are purplish, orangy, brownish, or grayish. Blue diamonds are even more rare and tend to have a slight hint of gray. Their color is caused by the presence of boron impurities—the more boron, the deeper the blue.
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Fancy green diamonds are typically light in tone and low in saturation. Their color often appears muted, with a grayish or brownish tint. The hue is generally in the yellowish green category. In most green diamonds, the color usually on appears on the surface of the stone. This is why diamond cutters try to leave as much of the natural rough around the girdle as possible.
Green diamonds get their color when radiation displaces carbon atoms from their normal positions in the crystal structure. This can happen naturally when diamond deposits lie near radioactive rocks, or artificially as a result of treatment by irradiation. Naturally colored green diamonds are extremely rare. Because of their rarity and the very real possibility of treatment, green diamonds are always regarded with suspicion and examined carefully in gemological laboratories. Even so, advanced gemological testing can’t always determine color origin in green diamonds. |
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The most common fancy diamond color is brown. Brown diamonds were commonly used in the early times. Romans typically set brown diamonds in rings. In modern times, however, these diamonds took some time to become popular.
Brown diamonds were typically considered good only for industrial use until the 1980s, when abundant quantities of them began to appear in the production of the Argyle mines. The Australians began using them in jewelry. They gave them names like “cognac” and “champagne” which are some names we might see associated with these colored stones today. Brown diamonds range in tone from very light to very dark. Consumers generally prefer brown diamonds in medium to dark tones with a warm, golden to reddish appearance. They generally show a hint of greenish, yellowish, orangy, or reddish modifying colors. |
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Yellow is diamond’s second most common fancy color. Yellow diamonds are sometimes marketed as “canary.” While this isn’t a proper grading term, it’s commonly used in the trade to describe fancy yellow diamonds.
Until the late 1990s, there was not much demand for black diamonds. Designers started using them in jewelry, especially contrasted with tiny colorless diamonds in pavé settings, and they then began to gain in popularity. Believe it or not, fancy white diamonds also exist. They have a milky white color. Sometimes white diamonds are cut to display beautiful opalescent flashes of color. There are also gray diamonds. Most of them contain a high level of hydrogen as an impurity element, which probably causes their color. |
