Fancy Colored Diamonds vs. Sapphires of the same color

[davi_el_mejor]

In your opinion how do the two compare to each other in regards to the "bling" factor? sorry for the laymens term but between the search for an appropriate stone and being at work my brain is a little fried.

 

[chrono]

The two are not comparable. With coloured gemstones, one usually goes for the best colour, meaning as little modifiers as possible. The sapphire will show brilliance and rich colouring, but barely any dispersion (rainbow fire). With coloured diamonds, purity of colour is often beyond a layperson’s budget so we forgive that and accept some gray, brown or whatever other mixture. In return, coloured diamonds will give you fabulous flash and dispersion, adding some colour for interest.

 

[movie zombie]

The two are not comparable. With coloured gemstones, one usually goes for the best colour, meaning as little modifiers as possible. The sapphire will show brilliance and rich colouring, but barely any dispersion (rainbow fire). With coloured diamonds, purity of colour is often beyond a layperson’s budget so we forgive that and accept some gray, brown or whatever other mixture. In return, coloured diamonds will give you fabulous flash and dispersion, adding some colour for interest.

well stated.

diamonds have the 4 c's and it is rather "easy" to buy a diamond. color stones are a whole 'nother ballgame.

and to paraphrase Chrono, i'd go a step further and i would also say that purity of color for color gems is often beyond a layperson's budget so we must also forgive that and accept some gray, brown, or whatever other mixture.....as well as extinction and windowing.

mz

 

[davi_el_mejor]

The two are not comparable. With coloured gemstones, one usually goes for the best colour, meaning as little modifiers as possible. The sapphire will show brilliance and rich colouring, but barely any dispersion (rainbow fire). With coloured diamonds, purity of colour is often beyond a layperson’s budget so we forgive that and accept some gray, brown or whatever other mixture. In return, coloured diamonds will give you fabulous flash and dispersion, adding some colour for interest.

Thanks Chrono and MZ. I was hoping for a different answer to make my search easier Back to the tedious somewhat neverending search of finding a colored diamond.

 

[kenny]

I know more about diamonds than colored gems but I've been learning and looking into buying either a blue diamond or a blue sapphire so this subject is of great interest to me.

White diamonds are (hopefully) cut for a high amount of light return scintillation, rainbow fire, contrast, pattern etc.
Many colors of naturally-colored diamond (NCD) rough is much more expensive than white diamond rough.
The price of NCDs is greatly affected by how strong the color is so they are often cut to intensify the color rather than to achieve all those light-performance factors mentioned above.
Money talks.
Since the material is so precious we see many NCDs with lopsided shapes and indented naturals at the girdle.

So, both colored gems and naturally colored diamonds are cut to optimize the color and the weight.

Light travels in a straight line that changes direction when it passes from one material to the next.
How much it changes direction is expressed by Index of Refraction (RI).
Diamond and sapphire have different RI so a sapphire must be deeper to do the same thing with light.

In the current market you have near zero chance of finding a sapphire and a diamond you describe, colorwise and cutwise.

Just for argument's sake let's say you had unlimited funds, connections to source the rough, and a cutter highly skilled with of both diamond and sapphire.
Let's say you commissioned the job with the goal of getting a diamond and a sapphire of the same color, face-up size, and cut to look as similar as possible face up (of course they'll have different weights, depths and angles to compensate for RI differences).

Only then would you have a true apples to apples comparison of how these two materials would look and perform with light.
I would be very curious whether they would look and perform identically and, if different, how would those differences be described.

I suspect this has never been tried and the results would be fascinating to many.

 

[LD]

I agree with everything else but ...........

If you want a coloured diamond that has a nice strong colour and won't break the bank then you need to look at HPHT or irradiated coloured diamonds. They are surprisingly not as cheap as you may think and, like all other gemstones, there are good, bad and very very ugly! I have a number of HPHT green diamonds that are stunning!

However, if you're a CS'er that gets the heebie jeebie's at the thought of treatments, you'd better start saving your pennies!

 

[T L]

I agree with everything else but ...........

If you want a coloured diamond that has a nice strong colour and won't break the bank then you need to look at HPHT or irradiated coloured diamonds. They are surprisingly not as cheap as you may think and, like all other gemstones, there are good, bad and very very ugly! I have a number of HPHT green diamonds that are stunning!

However, if you're a CS'er that gets the heebie jeebie's at the thought of treatments, you'd better start saving your pennies!

You mean you better start saving your thousand dollar bills.

 

[dkodner]

Here is a link to a similar post, where I posted a side by side comparison of a fine sapphire and the finest blue diamond (and closest to a sapphire) that I have ever seen. The picture mutes the color of the diamond, it looks much richer in person, but it shows how much more true depth of blue there is in a fine sapphire. I hope this helps.

rockytalky/colored-diamonds-vs-sapphires-t137218.html

 

[movie zombie]

the best i can describe the difference between the two would be that the sapphire will glow [no extinction/no over saturation] meaning no glints from the darkness but a pure magical absolutely stunning blue glow v. the diamond with its facets and what i call "sparkly" factor. different and both worthy of worship.

yes, you will need to save many, Many, MANY thousand dollar bills.

mz

 

[Sagebrush]

dkodner,


Excellent image comparison, that says it all, though I will say there are bluer blue diamonds, but the Wittelsbach resembles your small blue in color.

 

[dkodner]

Hi Richard,

The picture I took does not do it justice at all. But I am sure you are correct, this is just the most saturated I have had in my hands. You know this stone, you have a better picture of it in your book, Secrets of the Gem Trade, when it was part of the variety collection..

 

[T L]

I'm not sure what kind of lighting this was taken in, but this is my very favorite photo of a blue diamond. I can actually SEE the blue. It's from Leibisch.

 

[kenny]

I thought this 5-ct Fancy Vivid Blue Diamond wasn't too shabby.

You'd think Harry Winston could center the prongs though.

 

[T L]

Kenny
That photo looks a bit enhanced in color. I do not think the Liebisch photo is enhanced.

 

[kenny]

Kenny
That photo looks a bit enhanced in color. I do not think the Liebisch photo is enhanced.

Well, darn it, that just does it.
I'm returning the ring to HW tomorrow morning.

 

[T L]

You should, Leibicsh is much more reasonably priced!

 

[davi_el_mejor]

You should, Leibicsh is much more reasonably priced!

TL, Thank you. You answered a question I was going to ask before I asked it! I've been looking at two Leibisch diamonds. One that fits my colored stone eye that might have the glitz and glammer I'm looking for, and one that intrigues me visually with an acceptable color (for me) and probably a lot more glitz and glammer than the other cut could offer. This is and will be a frustrating but well-worth-it experience.

 

[dkodner]

Here is a better picture of the pear shape cropped from a group photo, where you can see the color is more sapphire-like, hopefully giving you a better perspective of how the color mutes when put next to a genuine sapphire.

 

[Rockdiamond]

Great discussion!

Nice photo Dkodner- really does show the difference.,
From my perspective, part of the difference is how much white light comes back to your eye.
Sapphires return a fraction of what a diamond does.
This is a Fancy Deep Blue Asscher Cut. The "deep", in this case, give a lot of what you expect to see in a vivid.

I also feel that diamond's color is more...sublime, while a sapphire is more.....obvious(?)

 

[T L]

Dkodner,
That pear diamond is more the color of a typical blue spinel to my eye than a sappphire. I see quite a bit of grey in there, although it is a rare and worthy specimen of a blue diamond. I'm sure it can only really be appreciated IRL where you can actually see the scintillation and sparkle, and how a diamond truly performs it's magic with light.

 

[T L]

Great discussion!

Nice photo Dkodner- really does show the difference.,
From my perspective, part of the difference is how much white light comes back to your eye.
Sapphires return a fraction of what a diamond does.
This is a Fancy Deep Blue Asscher Cut. The "deep", in this case, give a lot of what you expect to see in a vivid.

I also feel that diamond's color is more...sublime, while a sapphire is more.....obvious(?)

What are you trying to do David? Give all the asscher nuts around here heart attacks?

 

[davi_el_mejor]

I'm sure it can only really be appreciated IRL where you can actually see the scintillation and sparkle, and how a diamond truly performs it's magic with light

Thanks TL, that's a problem I'm having in making a decision. Colored stones I look for the color first and the rest is all extra. Do you know if Leibish does videos of the stones by request to see how they perform? I can't really contact them from work, thre are pretty strict filters in place and can't watch videos anyways. But I digress.

I had started this thread because sapphires are nearly as hard/durable and come in a wide variety of colors like diamonds. In my head I had thought it would go beyond the blues, but I didn't articulate that.

 

[chrono]

That is one amazing blue pear diamond that TL posted. Based on its size on the fingers, it looks to be well over 2 carats and with that saturation that has so little gray, I’d better it costs a pretty penny! I’m sure with the dispersion IRL, it’s going to look a lot better in person.

 

[dkodner]

Dkodner,
That pear diamond is more the color of a typical blue spinel to my eye than a sappphire. I see quite a bit of grey in there, although it is a rare and worthy specimen of a blue diamond. I'm sure it can only really be appreciated IRL where you can actually see the scintillation and sparkle, and how a diamond truly performs it's magic with light.

TL- You are correct, from the photo. This is a great opportunity to reiterate that in colored diamonds, you can NEVER trust the picture. This stone photographs so differently depending on the lighting. Here is a picture I just took in my office, it looks much truer to it's color, and I think you can now see why I would compare it to the sapphire. Still, though, if you see that stone side by side to the sapphire from the other thread, it still pales in richness and depth to the sapphire. Of course, I still love the diamond much more than any sapphire I have seen...

 

[Rockdiamond]

D, that looks like an amazing stone, really remarkable.
The second photo really shows it far better.

 

[packrat]

TL, I love that blue pear! What a gorgeous blue!

 

[Leibish & Co.]

The difference between Diamonds and Gem stones, are in brilliance and in the shade of the blue.
In general Gem stones colors don't have same shades like Natural Fancy colored diamonds.
I think I would say the Blue Sapphire have more "Glowing" color rather than more "settled" color Fancy color have, and off course the brilliance and life only diamonds have.
Needles to say both types are amazing, they are just two different things…

With-in Fancy colored diamonds the shade that are the closest to Sapphires are Deep and Vivid Blue.
You must take under consideration that Blue diamonds are almost the most expensive color that exist (second only to Red Diamonds), and That Deep and Vivid are the most expensive among the Blues since those are the strongest intensity(so basically they are the "cream de la cream" of the Blues), therefore even a rather small sized Blue diamond will be extremely expensive…

Also in The same color intensity there can be several levels that will change the price, you can see two different stones that have the same color definitions by GIA but face up completely different(and their price will be different as well), Fancy colored diamonds are nothing like White diamonds, every color definition can appear in many different shades and in different strength of intensities.
we always measure our stones intensities according to a scale of 1-10, which means if it's 10 out of 10 on the color scale it means it is a very strong color an could have gotten that next color intensity by GIA easily(i.e, an intense Yellow which is 10 out of 10 on tehe scale could have been considered as Vivid as well but GIA were strict and gave it a lower grade ), and if it's 1 out of 10 on the color scale it means it was very "lucky" to receive the certificate it got, since it's color intensity is very weak.

When coming to buy a blue diamond, and when the budget is an issue, sometimes you might consider a blue main color with a secondary over tone, such as Grayish, (i.e. Fancy Greyish Blue or Fancy Deep Greyish Blue), it will still be expensive but much less than a Pure Blue.

If the secondary color will Be Grey and not Grayish, the secondary color will start to be more visible in the stone(the Gey blue combination will start to be more visible) rather than just a tint of Greyish when it's Grayish, and the price will go down even further.

I'll try to give some examples in pics to show the different shades of Natural Blues.
Here you can see an Oval shape Deep Blue next to a Pear shape Vivid Blue , you can see the Vivid is a very "Pure" Blue color and the Deep is much "Richer" in color:

 

[Leibish & Co.]

Here is a Picture of Two Fancy Deep Blue GIA one next to the other, but as you can see have completely different strength of intensities, they are both amazing stones, but face up differently.

hope this helps to understand the difference a little bit....

Itzik

 

[T L]

Itzik,
Thank you for the information on blue diamond and the great photos. For me, of all of those stones, I prefer the fancy vivid blue by far. The tonality on the others is just too dark for my taste. I love the more pure blue color of the pear. Is that the same pear in your amazing avatar? Can you tell us more about that amazing gem like size, color, is it still available, can we trade our first born children for it?

 

[kenny]

Itzik those blue diamonds, and your pics, are stunning!

Darn it.
Now I'm back to looking for a blue diamond.

I'm still curious about the difference in light performance between sapphire and diamond cut to look similar face up - my question from my long thread above still stands. Maybe it was too stupid of a question to warrant an answer.
Yes, I realize that for a given budget a high end blue diamond will be tiny compared to a high end blue sapphire.
Sometimes size isn't everything.

Sheesh! Does this never end?