Traditionally, when people think about diamonds they imagine the clear ones, where the value of the stone is judged by its lack of color. However, the world of popular jewelry is expanding into taking advantage of the full range of diamond colors. All colored diamonds are extremely rare and will often be more expensive than colorless ones.
The colorless diamonds are judged on an alphabetic scale that indicates their level of color, from D through Z. For these diamonds, the less color they have (D is considered the best grade in this category), the more valuable they are. However, colored diamonds get placed in one of nine categories to describe the quality of their color. The lighter shades fit into either faint, very light, light, fancy light, or fancy. Once the color begins to intensify, it will be categorized as either fancy dark, fancy intense, fancy deep, or fancy vivid. The range of specific colors available includes blue, brown, green, grey, orange, pink, and yellow. There are also red diamonds, but these are the rarest color. In addition to the intensity level and the main color of the diamond, a colored diamond can also have different hues or secondary colors.
Different naturally occurring colors in diamonds are created by different causes. All diamonds were created millions of years ago as a result of intense heat and pressure acting on carbon dioxide molecules. The various colors result from the presence of other gases, pressures, or impurities in the stone. For example, blue diamonds (like The Hope Diamond) are believed to get their color from the presence of boron or hydrogen in the stone.
Yellow diamonds, also called Canary diamonds, are created through the presence of higher levels of nitrogen. All diamonds with nitrogen present are classified as Type I diamonds. However, the presence of nitrogen doesn't necessarily create a colored diamond. If the nitrogen atoms occur in large pairs (sub-classified as Type IaB), then a yellowish or brownish tint will begin to appear. There can often be other colors present to varying degrees in these diamonds as well, particularly hues of greens or oranges.
Type II diamonds have no nitrogen present in them. The sub-classification for colored diamonds in this group is Type IIb, which includes red, pink, and brown diamonds. Instead of getting colored due to gas, their color results from the extreme pressure that formed the structure of these stones. Officially considered defects in how the crystal lattice of the diamond was formed, shades of pink and red diamonds actually considered some of the most desirable of the colored diamonds. It is also believed that pink diamonds, mostly mined from Australia's Argyle Mine, get their color due to the unusual type of rock from which they come. Most diamonds moved to the Earth's surface through a rock type called Kimberlite. However, the pink diamonds of the Argyle Mine came up through a rock called Lamproite. The belief is that this different type of rock made the journey to the Earth's surface more difficult for the pink diamonds, which contributed to their unusual color.
Green diamonds exist outside this nitrogen or no nitrogen dichotomy. These tones are present in diamonds due to exposure to radiation in the Earth's core. Typically this happens when the diamonds are formed near uranium ore. In other cases, defects called inclusions, that occur on the surface of the diamond creates the color. These inclusions affect how light gets reflected off the diamond. Black diamonds are one such example.
These are all descriptions of how colors can naturally occur in diamonds. Modern science has been used to recreate the presence of impurities or apply extreme heat to diamonds in order to artificially create color in diamonds. While artificially colored diamonds can provide the same beauty and intensity of naturally colored diamonds, they won't be as expensive. In fact, these lab-created colored diamonds can make a range of unique and original jewelry designs available to a wide variety of people.
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