Curious about the future of diamond grading with the emergence of the lab grown market; especially color grading...

[Musa15]

Would we ever see better than "D" color grading? Is there a tight spectrum of colorless within the D color grade? Would there ever be a greater than D color grade in the future? Or is D supposed to encompass the most colorless? Would it be possible to reach an even higher colorless limit? Does this question make sense?

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

D is colorless.
Dealers used ABC and 123 as grades, numbers for color and letters for clarity or vice a versa.
So GIA started the scale at D.
Human vision finds a slight blueish tinted white to be 'whiter than white'.
Grown diamonds can be made to appear slightly whiter by adding Boron during the growth process. Some how this is seen to be bad by many. I don''t get it?
Before 1993 the diamond industry paid a premium for non hazy strong blue fluorescent D to F diamonds (until Koreans got caught overgrading the color).

Google it and search for images and you get stuff like this:
whiter than white
phrase of white

1. extremely white.
   "the detergent that washes whiter than white"
   
   
   

 

[Karl_K]

D is a range.
Also crystal quality can make a large difference in any color grade.
The issue you see a lot in mmd is they may be D color but they have cwappy crystal which impacts the appearance.
@DejaWiz feel like posting some examples?

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

D is a range.
Also crystal quality can make a large difference in any color grade.
The issue you see a lot in mmd is they may be D color but they have cwappy crystal which impacts the appearance.
@DejaWiz feel like posting some examples?

inetrnal graining - the biggest issue

 

[Karl_K]

Here was the reply I got from my contact at IGI.
"IGI will not issue a ND or LGD report for stones with non-permanent treatments like dyes, coatings, etc.
To be permanent a treatment must alter the stone at the molecular level."

IGI link that talks about treatments:

Are 'Post-Growth Treatments' Permanent?

Post-growth treatments are commonly used to reduce color-appearance. Logically, people want to know "are the treatments permanent?"

www.igi.org

Just for fun, chicken treatment/cleaning for gemstones and pearls.

Chicken cleaning and heat treatment. What?

Since ancient times, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used dyes, coatings, oils and other methods to improve their gemstones and pearls.

www.igi.org

 

[Bron357]

When people decided that white / colourless was “the best”, D was allocated as the “top grade”. Everything is then compared to that and the further the colour moves away from white / colourless the “lower” the colour grade.
If you’re someone who rather likes a golden hue or a greyish hue, you’re in luck, your preferred hue will be cheaper.
As with many things, it’s a human decision that decides what’s “best”.
Supply and demand are two drivers of price.
Padparadscha sapphires are a classic class of example of a gem exponentially increasing in price because of a change in human ”taste”.
Likewise black diamonds, which being opaque may as well be onyx, were for a while “flavor of the month”. Then we had “salt and pepper / galaxy diamonds”, diamonds so full of crystal imperfections that a P3 clarity grading was extremely generous yet they became “a thing to covet and desire”.