The traditional white diamonds, like those found in most classic engagement rings, pendants and other diamond jewelry, are created from a complex process involving super-heated, highly pressurized carbon molecules close to the Earth’s core. However this is not the only diamond color. So let’s take a look at some interesting information about colored diamonds:
What are Colored Diamonds?
As it turns out Natural Colored diamonds are created in the same way, with one unique difference. When foreign particulates are trapped during the crystallization process from which diamonds are formed, it affects and alters the chemical process and therefore, changes the outcome. The result is a beautiful, rare, and exceptional diamond with unique colorings – called a natural colored diamond.
How do Colored Diamonds get Their Color?
Different trace minerals and particulates result in different hues, and different intensities of those hues. A "fancy" diamond is a natural diamond that has color. These colors vary from red, green, purple, violet, orange, blue and pink - and most shades between. Fancy color shades vary from faint to intense.
Brown, Red & Pink Diamonds
These diamonds owe their color to a combination of intense pressure and heat. While still buried deep within the earth, these factors cause distortions in the crystal lattice that absorb green light, thus reflecting a pink hue. Ultra-rare red diamonds, which are actually just deeply colored pink diamonds, have the same cause of color.
Gray & Blue Diamonds
For the most part, blue diamonds get their color from boron. When this impurity is present, it bonds to carbon in the crystal structure, absorbing red, yellow and green areas of the color spectrum.
It's not until the last leg of their journey to the earth's surface that diamonds get their green color. Just as they are about to leave the uppermost layer of the crust, these stones absorbs naturally occurring radiation, which causes them to reflect a green hue by absorbing red and yellow light.
Violet and Purple Diamonds
So far, all scientists are certain of is that the cause of color for purple and violet diamonds is crystal distortion. However, it is believed that the presence of hydrogen may be partly responsible for their hue.
Orange and Yellow Diamonds
The fantastic hue of yellow and orange diamonds can be attributed to one element: nitrogen. While a diamond is forming, nitrogen atoms will arrange in such a way that that blue light is absorbed, thus producing a yellow color. A specific grouping of nitrogen atoms is also responsible for the shading of orange diamonds, however these atoms can absorb light in both the blue and yellow spectrums.
How are diamonds colored?
Color treated diamonds are regular natural diamonds that were color enhanced – these are not lab grown diamonds. Therefore, their price is higher than that of the lower color quality stone it would have been before the treatment.
If owning a colored diamond is something you desire however cannot quite afford, then synthetic colored diamonds are another option you should consider. They are real diamonds, but are created in a lab.
Which colored diamond is your favorite? Share with us in the comments below.