Perhaps you are familiar with stunning colour gemstones such as rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Did you know that lab-grown and natural diamonds are also available? Many fancy colours look like colour gemstones.
Yellow diamonds are the most common fancy colour diamond. They are the most used colour for engagement rings, centre stones and fine jewellery pieces. Red, blue, green and pink are all possible fancy colour diamond hues, but they vary in rarity.
All your questions about rare gemstones, such as How do fancy colours get their colour? We will answer it. Which colour is the rarest? Can you buy a colour-lab-grown diamond?
Let’s go fancy with this introduction to fancy colour diamonds!
Fancy Color Diamonds
One in 10,000 diamonds mined has some form of colour variation. This is just 0.01% of all diamonds.
Fancy colour diamonds can reveal a variety of colours within the visible spectrum. We mentioned that yellow and brown are the most common fancy colour diamonds. This impacts their cost per carat. However, excavation discovered other fancy colour varieties of diamonds such as red, blue and green, orange, violet, grey and others.
The majority of colour diamonds that are brought to the surface by skilled miners have muted colours. They are often a pale shade rather than a deep jewel tone. Fancy colour diamonds are more valuable than white diamond colour grading. This is because they have a lower quality as you get closer to a “Z”.
The fancy colour scale for diamonds is: Very light, Very Light, Very Light, Medium, Heavy, Fancy, Intense, Faint, Very Light, Very Dark, Fairy, Bright, And So On.
This scale would allow a fancy yellow diamond with a “very dark” GIA colour to appraise for less than a yellow diamond of the same colour.
Colour Variety of Fancy Color Diamonds
All fancy colours of diamonds are not equally valued. The rarity of the colour determines the overall value and price per carat.
Let’s explore the different colour options of fancy-coloured diamonds to explain why each colour is so stunning.
Red Diamonds
Red diamonds are the rarest colour variation of colour diamonds. There are only 20-30 red diamonds currently mined in the world. A red diamond’s average size is between 1/2 and 1 carat. It is worth approximately $1 million per carat.
Red diamonds, made from pure carbon and containing no chemical influence during diamond formation, are somewhat mysterious. You will see that trace amounts of other elements influence all other colours of diamonds during diamond formation. These rare stones are believed to be extremely rare by experts. The red colour comes from the stress lamination in the diamond’s lattice defect.
Blue Diamonds
The light reflects blue diamonds because of the boron crystal structure.
Boron’s origins can be loosely connected to ancient oceans. They are abundantly found on Earth’s surface. Rarely is Boron found in the Earth’s crust where the necessary elements for creating diamonds are present? It is not clear how Boron seeps into diamond crystals during formation.
Red diamonds are more common than blue diamonds. On average, 1 carat, the medium-toned blue diamond is priced at $200,000.
It was the most recent auctioned blue diamond in the world and sold for $57.5million.
Pink Diamonds
A thorough analysis of more than 90,000 pink colour diamonds revealed that 99.5% is due to the crystal structure and not trace chemical influences. This altered crystal feature adds to the beauty of pink diamonds.
Most of the world’s pink-coloured diamonds were found in Australia’s Argyle Mine. These diamonds are extremely rare. The price range for natural pink diamonds is between $100,000 and $1 million per carat.
Green Diamonds
The majority of green diamonds are only visible on the surface of the stones. Still, the most valuable and valuable ones have a deep, rich green saturation throughout the entire stone.
The green colour is caused by trace radioactive materials like uranium and thorium. These radioactive materials emitted radiation during diamond formation as they decayed. This material often cannot penetrate the diamond’s surface layer, making natural vivid-colour diamonds extremely rare.
Yellow and Brown Diamonds
Half of the supply of fancy colour stones is made up of yellow and brown varieties. The GIA colour grading system reflects that most natural white diamonds are yellow- or brown-coloured.
Trace amounts of nitrogen seep into the crystal structure of yellow diamonds, causing a yellowish hue. White diamonds with a slight yellow tint are less valuable than colourless white diamonds. The level of saturation is what determines the value of a yellow diamond.
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