Fancy a little color in that diamond?

Today's blog entry will be on the subject of colored diamonds. 

First I'll run through the definitions: 

Fancy color diamonds: Diamonds which have a vivid or intense color. The hue of these diamonds can vary across the entire spectrum of colors. 

 Each colored diamond will vary in intensity and will therefore be given a classification in regards to how intense the coloring is. It will be classified under one of the following nine saturation grades: 

• Faint, 
• Very Light, 
• Light, 
• Fancy Light, 
• Fancy, 
• Fancy Intense, 
• Fancy Vivid, 
• Fancy Deep, 
• and Fancy Dark. 

The graphic below shows GIA's Fancy Color Grade interrelationships.

(see leibish.com for examples of different grades of colored diamonds)  Fancy Vivid is the grade given to diamonds with the highest level of saturation as can be seen in the chart. 

This is highly desirable, and naturally exceptionally rare.

Something else I wanted to mention is that faintly colored diamonds, or should I say, sub-faintly colored diamonds, which have less color than those with an official designation of "Faint"are unsurprisingly rather common. 

It's the colorless and the intense colors that are rare and hence their cost. Colorless diamonds are assigned the letter "D" when their color is graded by a GIA lab. A diamond with a very slight increase in color (when compared to a D) be assigned an "E", followed by an "F", then a "G" etc, all the way down to Z. Very few people seem interested in diamonds that fall between "K" and "Z". 

Fancy colored diamonds have just a bit more color than a "Z". 

X-Y-Z stones that have yellow or brown as their color do have enough color to be counted as fancy color diamonds.

Each group of gemological labs has its own grading system, but the dominating grading system is the one developed by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA).

Yellow is the most popular fancy color. It appears to have become more and more popular and a number of celebrated public figures have been seen sporting yellow diamond rings. Here are some of the people seen wearing yellow diamonds in recent years: Heidi Klum, Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba, Megan Fox, Kelly Clarkson, Anna Kournikova, Carrie Underwood.

Yellow diamonds stand out because they do get noticed, and they are known to be rare. About 10,000 times as rare as white diamonds.

Yellow diamonds are much rarer than white. The yellow color in diamonds is caused by nitrogen replacing carbon atoms in the diamond's molecular structure. Higher levels of nitrogen in the stone's composition results in a deeper color.

Since vividly colored diamonds are indeed rare, you will find that cutters try their best to retain as much of the diamond as possible. Another priority will be on shaping the diamond in such a way as to retain the intensity of the diamond's color. If a colored diamond has not been cut to be perfectly symmetrical it will usually be because this was a necessary compromise to retain more size rather than lop off a few more corners to get it into perfect symmetry. If you prefer your diamond to be perfectly symmetrical, keep looking. You can find them.