Same stone different light different look

[snoopkat]

The sapphire on my e ring holds its colour pretty well in most (normal) lighting - the horrid fluorescent lights in the office, the downlights at home and under sunlight. If I have to rate its colour intensity, it wouuld be 1) sunlight 2) horrid fluorescent office lights (who would've thought!) 3) downlights.

Anyhoo...I went into Tiffany the other day to look at wedding bands and while I was trying on one of the bands against my e ring, I looked down and saw that my stone was dead! There was no intensity, no sparkle and no life. I figured, ok it's a sapphire it doesn't disperse light the way a diamond does so it's pretty unfair to compare my ring when I'm surrounded by all this other bling. So I stood a little further away from the counter and it was the same thing. All I saw on my finger was a blah stone where it used to breathe fire.

Fast forward a few weeks later, I went to Cerrone (an upmarket jeweller in Sydney) and the first thing I looked at was the store lighting. It looked a little bit different to Tiffany, a little brighter. So I figured, goody my stone wouuld look better when I'm inside. Guess what? SAME THING HAPPENED! It wasn't as bad as when I was at T&C, but it still looked pretty blah and lifeless. It was almost like my stone had a split personality and Mr Hyde had just entered the building.

Now I know that CS performs differently under different lighting, but I would've thought that it should have the best performance under jewellery store lighting (I mean, that's the whole point right? To make jewellery look even sparklier and blingier). I'm no colour expert by any means, but I swear my stone looks so much better right now while I'm sitting at my desk than it did when I was at the stores.

I'm not overly upset by this, I mean I spend more time under normal lighting than I do under jewellery store lighting so it's not like as if my stone would look crap all the time. I just can't get my head around why my stone would look the worst I've ever seen it in a place where it's meant to sparkle. Anyone else had this same problem or am I just going loopy?

 

[chrono]

Lighting at most jewellery stores are done to emphasize the fire of diamonds. This type of lighting is usually well placed spot lighting which their location and type were studied beforehand. Unfortunately, this type of lighting happens to be one of the poorest type for coloured gemstones.

 

[FrekeChild]

Spot lights (specifically my kitchen's halogens) kill all of my colored stones. Except for a a few rare fire shots!

Peter Asscher, Barry cushions.

 

[RedSpinel]

The last time I was in a nicer, medium grade jewelry store, a large Jareds, I brought my main gem tray with me to pick out a stone to get mounted, and I had the opposite experience that you described. I had been looking at my collection mainly under my cfl's at home, and when I broke out my gem tray in that store, they friggin' came to life!! I was standing either in the middle of the store, away from diamonds, or by the area where they had mostly colored gems, but wherever I went in there, most of my gems looked bright and fantastic!! Much better than at home. I had the entire staff swooning over my collection for the whole time I was there.

I've had that same lighting experience at 3 other jewelry stores too.

 

[0-0-0]

I find that higher saturation really helps out colored stones under fluorescent lamps and spotlighting.

Tiffany may carry overpriced, highly treated colored stones, but I must say they carry some of the nicest pink sapphires I have seen in person, even under the difficult lighting (for colored stones) that they have in stores.

 

[snoopkat]

Thought I'd post a couple of photos of my ring under different lighting. Most were taken today with my camera phone so it isn't top quality photography but you get the idea.







T&C wouldn't allow photography in store and I wasn't about to go back to Cerrone so I trawled through PS and found a vendor photo from an old thread for a sapphire that's deemed too dark. Now obviously the tone in the vendor's sapphire is very different to mine (I see some purple in the vendor's photo which I didn't see in my own stone at T&C) but the overall lifelessness, lack of lustre and dullness is very similar to what I saw in my own ring.

 

[snoopkat]

RedSpinel - just out of curiosity how did your gemstones perform under your own lighting at home? I imagine they couldn't have been too bad otherwise you wouldn't have kept them right? Had I seen my sapphire in T&C or Cerrone's lighting, I would never have bought it.

FrekeChild - the colour change in those 2 photos are unreal! What did you mean by diffused natural and incandescent? Did you mix daylight with halogen lighting?

 

[colorluvr]

I have a light yellow pear shaped chrysoberyl. It is a chunky cut stone, as opposed to a highly faceted stone, so it throws off flashes. It looked incredible (when I had it set) in restaurants, in most lighting in my house and out in the sun.

I wore it to an Intergem show and it looked horrible under most of the vendors' lighting.... I'm guessing they were mostly set up to show off diamonds. It was also too close to the color of my skin, so I removed it from it's setting and now it's living in a gem jar. I had never seen a chryoberyl that color before in person - it looked like a light yellow diamond in the correct lighting. In fact, the young lady that was working at the jewelry store where I had it set (who waited on me when I picked up the ring, but didn't know what kind of a stone it was) asked if it was a yellow diamond when she pulled it out of the envelope for me.

It also looked horrible in the quicky photos that I took of the ring before I had the stone removed... I was used to some colored stones going "blah" in some lighting, but this one surprised me.

 

[RedSpinel]

RedSpinel - just out of curiosity how did your gemstones perform under your own lighting at home? I imagine they couldn't have been too bad otherwise you wouldn't have kept them right? Had I seen my sapphire in T&C or Cerrone's lighting, I would never have bought it.

FrekeChild - the colour change in those 2 photos are unreal! What did you mean by diffused natural and incandescent? Did you mix daylight with halogen lighting?

Well, I had replaced all my home light bulbs with cfl's, and I used the medium color temp cfl's, called "bright white" as opposed to the more blue-ish so called "daylight" cfl's of 6000K or the soft white ones of around 2,500k. The bright white ones seem to be the brightest of the brand of bulbs I chose, so I bought them, but those cfl's dont do as good a job at bringing out the brightness, arent great at rendering color and dont set off the 'bling' as well as the the lighting I've seen at a few nicer jewelry stores.

These cfl's arent terrible, and most of the gems in my collection dont look bad under those bulbs, but they could look better under better lights. The colors of a few gems suffer under these lights.

I literally just got through reading 2 Looonnnggg articles about "the best lighting for colored gems" right before I read your post, as I would like to find better lights for a few rooms for gem viewing.

 

[FrekeChild]

FrekeChild - the colour change in those 2 photos are unreal! What did you mean by diffused natural and incandescent? Did you mix daylight with halogen lighting?

I have basically a wall of windows (sliding plate glass door) and I was taking the second picture under the incandescent during the day.

The attached are two photos of the same three stones, with only natural light, but they are of several stones in my gem box, so I wasn't exactly focusing in on these guys, so they don't look their best! Oh heck, I'll attach one of the "bigger picture" pics too.

 

[minousbijoux]

Freke:

Not to threadjack, but must say, those are beautiful stones - I love the cutting.