J's & Body Tone? Can Those in the Trade Chime In.

[ccuheartnurse]

Hi All,

Does anyone here have any J's with, specifically, slight yellow brown body tone? I have seen yellow body tone & stones with, unfortunately green body tone & of course ones with fluoro but not sure about the yellow -brown variety. I've been trying to dig up threads that might have examples. Does the brown body tone soften the J? I have read that yes, the slight brown will make a warmer stone face up whiter. I'm not so convinced. I understand every stone is different but on average, what is the better body tone for a J? Better to stick with a creamy body tone? A well cut stone will reflect light better than a non well cut stone, but even with a well cut/ idea/ super ideal, will you still see the tone face up? I'm thinking of Layla here about light reflection. Also, please add if you have any stones with Green, or Grey body tone as well.

If there are threads that anyone knows of & can link, please do so. If anyone, or trades, have images, please post examples.

Thank you.

 

[ccuheartnurse]

Victor Canera website:
https://www.victorcanera.com/blog/diamond-color-undertones

Nice write up. He has a pic of an I with yellow undertone & grey that I found helpful. So far, I haven't seen any other vendor with a page dedicated to body undertones. If you have one, please post it.

 

[twang07]

I have J WF ACA studs that are small ~0.6ctw. It faces up super white, compared with a much higher colored diamond the other day, just as white from the top. The side though is yellow. I can't tell if it's brown-undertones, just looks yellow to me (it's in YG, I am bad at distinguishing shades of white). So FWIW, I think a super ideal J looks pretty white from the top.

Don't have any pages to read unfortunately

 

[marymm]

Yeah, I've seen Js with yellow undertones and with grey/steely undertones, but not brown ...

 

[msop04]

I would imagine that J's with a brown or even gray undertone will look "whiter" as compared to those with yellow or green undertones... I rather like the brown undertones in lower colors, as they seem to have a softer, more romantic presence to them.

 

[msop04]

I think it really depends on the look you're going for and how the stone will be set. If you want to downplay the tint to appear whiter, then brown or gray may be a better bet than yellow/green undertones.

 

[Victor Canera]

Hi Ccuheartnurse,

I just wanted to chime in since this is an interesting topic. One thing to note is that a stone can have a relatively strong color undertone even at an I or J Color which is still above the grades where GIA starts to note the undertone. The photo of the diamond in our article with the strong gray undertone was an I color graded by GIA. In other words, an I or J can have an Brown, Gray, Green undertone but still not have that undertone noted on the lab report. I played around with a fancy yellow diamond graded by GIA for example which had an extremely strong brownish tint which wasn’t noted on the lab report.

The most common of these undertones is brown but you see stones with gray and green once in a while as well. Something else to consider is milkiness which from my experience is about as common as having a brown undertone in stones and it absolutely dulls out a diamond.

Does Brown make a diamond seem a little whiter? From my experience, I think the answer is yes but this is an illusion kind of like having fluorescence in a stone. Adding blue to a stone makes it appear more white which is why vendors like fluorescence in lower colors.

Small Related Fact: Back when yellow gold jewelry was popular, jewelers would buy TLB or TTLB goods for manufacturing in yellow gold jewelry. TLB = Top Light Brown TTLB = Top Top Light Brown diamonds. The first reason for this was economic as TLB melee were cheaper. The second was because TLB diamonds still looked relatively white when set in yellow gold.

In a super ideal stone, body color in the absolute face up position would be less visible than a non ideal. The areas of edge to edge brightness and contrast are stronger and would hide the undertone a bit. I’m not sure if you’d come across many super ideal cut stones that have issues like this. We for example vet our rough for unusual undertone colors and milkiness in the sourcing stage so they would never be added to our collection of stones.

One thing that some clients forget to consider is the long term value of a diamond. Stones with brown, green, gray undertones have a stigma to them so they’re discounted versus the standard yellow undertone. So future value might be stunted by this perception that dealers have for these stones. Most vendors wouldn’t want to stock a stone with an unusual undertone or they would heavily discount the diamond.

Good luck

 

[ccuheartnurse]

Hi All,
Ladies, thank you for your thoughts.

Victor than you for expounding on the information from your page. When viewing a loose tinted yellow -brown body tone J (or any colour with that tint), will setting it against white melee make any difference as the body of the stone is not what we are looking at?
** Edited to add: I do see you have in deed mentioned that top view down, it would be hard to see the tint**

There are a lot of stones out on Blue Nile or James Allen, sites that bring virtual stones to reality so to speak. You can see the yellow, yellow brown, or brown tint, some very obvious & some not so obvious. It's the not so obvious ones I'm wondering about. The slight ones that get sold but aren't disclosed as having it. Can the average person really perceive it's there? If not, is it because it faces up whiter

Stumbled on to this one. Have views changed?
David Atlas Thread 2006.
https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/is-most-color-grading-the-grading-of-tone.43135/

James Schultz Thread 2013.
https://www.pricescope.com/communit...-k-diamonds-are-brown-and-do-you-care.184489/

Some reading for those wondering about this topic.