April Birthstone: The Diamond
We don’t talk about birthstones every single month, but we love any opportunity to talk about our favorite gemstones. Diamonds are among our favorite gemstones. The diamond is the birthstone…
Fancy-colored diamonds can come in practically any color, and we love them all. We celebrate the rainbow in our favorite fashion, a rainbow of diamonds!
Gorgeous arrays of hues add pops of color to any look; diamond color can vary widely in the depth of color it displays. Some fancy colors are pale, while others are deeply hued. There is a look for everyone among the rainbow of beautiful stones out there!
RED DIAMONDS
The first color of the diamond rainbow, red, is the rarest of diamond colors. Pure reds with no hint of secondary colors are the rarest and most expensive diamonds worldwide. Weighing 5.11 carats, the Moussaieff Red Diamond is the world’s largest graded fancy red diamond.
ORANGE DIAMONDS
The second color in the diamond rainbow, orange diamonds, is also scarce. One renowned fancy vivid orange diamond, the 5.54-carat “Pumpkin,” was worn by Halle Berry at the 2002 Academy Awards.
YELLOW DIAMONDS
The third color in the diamond rainbow, yellow diamonds are far more common than red or orange diamonds. Yellow diamonds are a burst of sunshine and have become far more popular in recent years.
“The Vivid Yellow,” a 32.77 carat fancy yellow diamond, fetched $6.6 million at Christie’s in October 2011. A month later, the 110.03 carat “Sun Drop” sold for a record $12.3 million, the highest price paid for a yellow diamond at auction.
GREEN DIAMONDS
The fourth in the diamond color rainbow, green diamonds are another exceptionally rare hue. These rare beauties are created by radiation, and attempts to trace their origin are often inconclusive as a result.
The most famous and largest natural green diamond is the 41-carat Dresden Green. The Dresden Green is an exceptional diamond because its green color is evenly distributed throughout the body of the stone. While most green diamonds owe their color to surface “skins,” the Dresden is uniformly green.
BLUE DIAMONDS
The fifth in the diamond color rainbow, blue diamonds are famously rare and sought after. Blue diamonds present additional challenges for cutting. The color is often inconsistent throughout the stone, and the rough stones are typically asymmetrical.
The Hope diamond is the most famous blue diamond in the world. GIA graded the 45.52 carat stone as fancy deep greyish blue. The Hope diamond is a rare Type IIb with a unique orange-red phosphorescence.
PURPLE DIAMONDS
The sixth color in the diamond rainbow, purple diamonds are also quite rare. The diamond ore is exposed to hydrogen, creating a purple hue.
The Royal Purple Heart is one of the most famous purple diamonds; A 7.34-carat Fancy Vivid Purple I1 clarity diamond. The Royal Purple Heart is aptly named as it has both Vivid Purple color and is a heart shape. The heart shape brings out the brilliance of the natural purple color of the diamond.
Diamonds are found in almost every color of the rainbow, but most diamonds will have tints of yellow or brown. Typically, the term Diamond Color refers to the absence of color, which is a quality marker along with the other 4Cs of Diamond Clarity, Diamond Carat Weight, and Diamond Cut. This tutorial focuses on fancy-colored diamonds. Brown and yellow diamonds that exhibit more color than the Z grade within the D-Z color scale are known as fancy colors. Since most diamonds have a bit of yellow or brown, other colors outside those hues are called fancy colors. This includes pink, blue, green, black, red, and orange diamonds.
Celebrating the rainbow is a great way to add some new bling to your life!
Written by Kayti Kawachi
