GuestBlogger :: Mr. Greg

So far, we have discussed carat weight and diamond certification, and now we will discuss color and what it means.  Many of you have probably heard that “no color is good color,” and from a rarity standpoint this is true--unless we consider fancy colors, which we will cover a bit later. 

Color in a diamond has been described many different ways, but the bottom line is that after you have shown yours off, you want everyone to gasp because of its dazzling beauty. 

Color is rated on an alphabetical scale from D-Z.  Most people wonder why there is no ABC.  Well, let me tell you what happened. Before the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) created their standardized grading system, the system every jeweler in the world used was A, B or C.  It was their own personal way to represent their diamonds.  A jeweler graded their best diamonds as grade “A”, their second best as grade “B”, and their third best as grade “C”.  The challenge was that there was no correlation between each jeweler’s grades.  

One jewelers ”A” grade could have been today’s equivalent of an “F” color “VS1” clarity, where another jeweler would represent his “A” grade as an equivalent of today’s  “H” color “SI1” clarity. You could end up paying a lot more for a diamond based upon one jeweler’s grading system.

Luckily for you, in the 1940s and ‘50s, a standardized grading system was developed through GIA and is recognized as the industry standard today.  Now you can ask your jeweler for this grading system on every diamond you look at, and have a much better chance (it’s still not perfect) of getting what you are paying for.

A diamond is made up almost entirely by the element carbon.  Diamonds formed millions of years ago between 150 and 200 kilometers deep in the earth’s mantle just above the molten core.  Under tremendous pressure and temperature, the carbon crystallized in the cubic system. 

There are trace elements in diamonds that give a diamond color.  NITROGEN, for example will give a diamond the yellowish tinge that  moves the diamond’s color down the scale from D to Z.