The Colour of the diamond
There are many factors that affect the price for a diamond, one of them is the colour of the diamond. Learn everything you need to know to feel safe before your diamond purchase.
- Start
- Colour of the diamond
When you grade the colour of a diamond, you actually look at the lack of colour. A diamond that contains little or no colour gets a higher quality rating than a diamond with visible colour. The scale often goes from colourless to yellow, but some diamonds can also be slightly brown or grey.
Diamonds are often graded in either the traditional way, or according to GIA’s colour scale D –Z. At Efva Attling Stockholm, we have chosen to use the traditional scale when talking about the colour of the diamond, but in the list below we also state what each grading corresponds to on the GIA’s colour scale.
The diamond colour scale
At Efva Attling Stockholm, we only use diamonds with the second highest classification, Top Wesselton, meaning rare white diamonds.
• River (R): Very rare white. (D-E on GIA's colour scale)
• Top Wesselton (TW): Rare white. At Efva Attling Stockholm, we only use diamonds with this grading. (F – G on GIA's colour scale)
• Wesselton (W): White. (H on GIA's colour scale)
• Top Crystal (TCr): Very lightly tinted white. (I (Com) on the GIA colour scale)
• Crystal (Cr): Lightly tinted white. (J(Com) on the GIA colour scale)
• Top Cape (TCa): Tinted white. (K(Com)–L on GIA's colour scale)
• Cape (CA): Slightly yellowish. (M – N on GIA's colour scale)
• Light Yellow (LY): Light yellow. (O – R on GIA's colour scale)
• Yellow (Y): Yellow. (S – Z on GIA's colour scale)
Fancy colour diamonds
Sometimes it happens that naturally coloured diamonds are found, with colours outside the colour scale above. These diamonds are called fancy colour diamonds, and can appear in red, blue, yellow, green, or champagne. But finding a fancy colour diamond is extremely unusual, only one in 10 000 diamonds is coloured this way, which is also reflected in the price.
A fancy colour diamond is usually sold exclusively based on its colour and intensity, other aspects such as clarity and cut are therefore not as important. However, it is important to be aware that most coloured diamonds available on the market are not naturally coloured, they have been treated artificially.
Black diamonds
For a long time, black diamonds have been a mystery, because it is so rare to find them in the mines. So far, they have only been found in two places, in the Central African Republic, and Brazil. Despite this, there are a lot of black diamonds available on the market. The answer is simpler than you might think.
Most black diamonds sold today are ordinary diamonds, with slightly lower quality, which has been irradiated in a special process that makes them dark. This means that black diamonds are often less expensive than white ones. At Efva Attling Stockholm, we use these kinds of black diamonds. Because it is hard to find something more suitable than black diamonds, if you just want something that is really edgy.
