Everything You Need to Know about Diamond Color

August 27, 2010 • Posted by StunninfJewels in Diamond FAQ’s, Diamond Rings • Tags: Diamond Clarity, Diamond Cut, SI1 Clarity, SI2 Clarity • 0 comments  

How important is color when selecting a diamond? Well, I’ve been buying diamonds as gifts for about forty years now so let me tell you a little of what I’ve learned about buying diamonds without having to take out a second mortgage on your condo to do so.

When I began I didn’t have the Interment to use as an information resource but you do. I hope you’ve spent some time learning about diamonds. If you have, you know that color is one of the four C’s that go into evaluating diamond quality.

The other three C’s are:
Cut
Clarity
Carat

The other thing you should know about diamonds is that they come in different shapes. And some say shape impacts color. Here are the 10 major shapes of diamonds available in the market today:

Round
Oval
Pear
Marquis
Heart
Square
Cushion
Princess
Emerald
Radiant

I was surprised when I first learned the best diamond color is no color, or colorless as it is known in the diamond world. Diamond colors are graded by experts from the GIA (Gemological Institute of America) into different grade categories, including colorless, nearly colorless, faint yellow, very light yellow and light yellow. Within each category there are letter grades starting at a D grade colorless (the best) all the way to a Z grade light yellow. Wow, that’s a lot to sort through.

So why should you care. It’s all about the light. We have all been dazzled by diamonds and that dazzle comes from light entering the diamond, bouncing around the cuts, and reflecting back out. The less color, the more light gets into the diamond. It’s just that simple. At some point, the hint of color in a diamond begins to block light and you get less dazzle.

Here’s another reason to care. It’s also about the money. The better the color grade, the more you pay for the diamond. D, E, and F are the grades for Colorless diamonds; and G, H, I, and J are the grades for Near Colorless diamonds.

The first question that popped into my mind when I first learned of those grades was can you really tell the difference between a D and a G? I knew you’d pay a lot more for a grade D but was it worth the price?

The answer the high end jewelry retailers don’t want you to know is: “no, to the untrained eye the difference is not discernible.”

If you doubt that consider how they are actually graded. A gemologist from the GIA places a stone on a solid white background and then compares it against a stone considered by some other experts to be representative of the grade. Nobody walks around wearing diamonds against white backgrounds with graded diamonds next to them for comparison, so how can they possibly detect the differences?

What you need to realize is that the ultimate judge of diamond quality is the eye of the beholder. If you can’t tell the difference between a D grade and a cheaper graded diamond, why waste your money?

If you still aren’t convinced, spend some more time on the net and you’ll find experts out there who tell us shape also impacts the perception of diamond color. So depending on the shape, we are told, you could go to a graded diamond as low as an M and the diamond would still dazzle you with its brilliance.

There is one final consideration when it comes to saving money on diamond color I want to share with you – fluorescence.

Fluorescence is a complicated concept describing how diamonds respond to some exposure to UV (Ultra Violet) light. GIA studies have been done on this demonstrating d how fluorescence makes diamonds looking hazy during daylight. The most common type of fluorescence is blue fluoresced which is supposedly the culprit behind making the high grade colorless diamond appear hazy. There is some debate about this, but you can forget about all of it.

What’s important to you is this. There is no debate about what blue fluorescence does to lower graded diamonds. It makes them appear whiter. If you want an even better bang for your buck, you can go with a K grade with strong blue fluorescence.