What Is a Diamond Color?

While many diamond shoppers believe the best diamonds are colorless, there’s something completely different to know about diamond color. Colorless diamonds are valued for their lack of body color, and those displaying subtle body tints have trace elements in the crystal. The 4Cs is a universally recognized system of evaluating diamonds. It this system, the more colorless the stone, the higher value it has.

Like other natural earth-mined gems, diamonds may exhibit various amounts of yellow, brown, or even grey tints as a result of slight impurities in the crystal. But when stones display a prominent extent of attractive tints, this variety is referred to as color diamonds, or even fancy color diamonds. These rare varieties are highly desirable owing to their scarcity and beauty.

When assessing a fancy color diamond, a grader includes the stone's actual color, whether it be green, violet, brown, yellow, pink, blue, or other hues. A gem's tone is expressed as the degree of color, from light to dark. The saturation describes that color's purity of hue. Because colorless diamonds have no saturation to evaluate. they are examined with the stone’s fire and brilliance.

 

The color scale

GIA (the Gemological Institute of America) devised a universal system of grading diamonds years ago that provided consumers and professionals with a uniform system of communicating its color. Organized in stages from D meaning the most colorless to Z representing the most body color (outside of fancy color diamonds).

The official GIA scale expresses the color range in white diamonds only --- the D to Z system is never used for fancy color diamonds, even though diamonds in this classification exhibit some body color as the stones get closer to the bottom –or Z—range of the ranking system. The D—Z designation is used to indicate the degree to which the colorless stones exhibit a yellow, brown, or grey body color. Trained diamond graders use diamond master testing sets that have examples of various diamond colors at intervals along the grading scale to determine the color of the stone they are grading.

D color diamonds are extremely rare and valuable, however those closer to the end of the scale, like those in the N to Z range are not often used in jewelry, unless to accent brown or yellow diamond pieces.

 

Best color and clarity for diamonds

When shopping for the perfect diamond, there are many aspects of the stone to consider. Color is one of them, especially in larger sized stones. The color of the metal setting also impacts the overall appearance of the diamond you choose.

It’s wise to get the eye acclimated to even subtle differences in color so you end up with the best stone within your budget. Look at a few different colors to find the most pleasing color diamond for you. You may be able to select a D color, and that is the highest designation on the color scale. But you may be surprised to discover that even stones in the G-H-I range show wonderfully white in certain settings. If you select a yellow gold setting. Then you can select a lower color diamond on the grading scale, and it will still glisten wonderfully as a white stone in that setting

Clarity is another component to evaluate with determining the best stone to purchase. The clarity grade is established using a 10x magnification to set the clarity grade, even though the stone will normally be viewed with the naked eye. GIA created a system of communicating diamond clarity to establish the number of inclusions or lack of them in the diamond. As part of the clarity grade, stones are assessed for their overall face up appearance. Do it show tremendous sparkle and display a brilliant play of light? Those are taken into consideration.

Similar to the color gradings scale, the clarity scale has rankings from completely flawless (F) or its close rating of Internally flawless (IF) all the way down to the most included (blemished) stone which is ranked included (I) with subcategories of 1, 2, 3. Stones lower than those designations would not be used in jewelry.

 

Diamond color rating

Naturally colored diamonds must be graded separately in the clarity sector. In reality, most diamonds, whether they are colorless or fancy color diamonds show some inclusions under magnification. There are instances where the natural blemishes (inclusions) are so minute or light colored that they are difficult to detect even under 10x magnification. Other more prominent inclusions (which then are lower on the clarity scale) are larger, more abundant, and perhaps darker. Those stones will rank lower on the clarity scale. The complete scale is as follows;

 

Diamond Color in Fancy Color Diamonds

Color diamonds can be found in twelve pure hues: yellow, blue, pink, orange, green, brown, gray, purple, violet, red, white, and black. Chameleon diamonds exist as well and are often categorized on their own, but those are essentially greenish or yellowish diamonds that temporarily change colors once exposed to light or heat.