Color - The color of a diamond has the second biggest impact on the price, after carat weight.

Color

The color of a diamond has the second biggest impact on the price, after carat weight.

Did you know that diamonds come in pink, yellow, blue, green and red as well as white? When discussing the topic of color in diamonds, you need to differentiate between “colorless” diamonds and “fancy color” diamonds. Grading “colorless” diamonds involves deciding how closely a stone’s body color approaches colorlessness. Most diamonds have at least a trace of yellow or brown body color. The reason colorlessness is most highly valued is that diamonds in these ranges act like prisms, separating white light passing through it into a wide spectrum of colors. The more transparent the diamond, the wider the spectrum of colors.

Color	D E F	G H I J	K L M N	N O P Q R	S T U V W X Y Z
Scale	Colorless	Near Colorless	Faint Yellow	Very Light Yellow	Light Yellow

Chemical “impurities” (such as nitrogen boron) in the diamond will filter out some of the colors which in turn reduce the “fire” effect when light bounces back out of the diamond and into your eyes. Other than “fancy colors”, colorless diamonds tend to be more valuable. Rare colors such as blue, pink, purple, or red tend to be very expensive…and very beautiful.

If a diamond does not have enough color to be called fancy, then it is graded in a scale of colors ranging from Colorless to Light Yellow, “D” through “Z”. A diamond with a “D” color is considered to be colorless. If the color is more intense than “Z”, it is considered fancy. A fancy yellow diamond fetches a higher price than a light yellow diamond.

Most solitaire diamonds are graded "loose" which means umounted. They are examined by trained professionals to differentiate diamonds with the smallest traces of color. Once a diamond is mounted on a ring, even the trained professional cannot always tell the difference between, say a “D” color and an “E” or “F” color diamond!