Color and Colors

There are two very distinct types of color associated with diamonds.

The first, which is what most often comes to mind when you look at a diamond, is the color of the diamond itself. I like to think of this color as what the diamond is.

The other, which is what distinguishes the best cut diamonds, is the rainbow of spectral colors as light exits the diamond. Think of that as what the diamond does.

What color is a diamond?

Interestingly enough diamonds actually come in almost all colors of the rainbow. They can be blacker than coal to colorless as pure water – from opaque to crystal clear. Each color has a certain degree of rarity in nature, and to a great extent that is reflected in its value.

Our tastes and preferences for color also dramatically affect a diamond’s real value. Diamonds are especially prized when they are colorless. The extent to which otherwise colorless diamonds show any amount of the 3 most common colors – namely yellow, brown and grey – decreases their appeal and value to us. When these colors are intense, however, it is an entirely different story. More on that later.

As you might expect various systems emerged to describe diamond colors.

I first learned the old-time miner’s language that included terms like the top-color being called “Jaeger”, short for the Jaegersfontein Mine in South Africa that produced the highest percentage of these lusted after diamonds. There were also colors called Wesselton and Premier, for similar reasons.

South Africa was known as the Cape (of Good Hope). The truth is that diamonds from the entire region tend toward yellow, so “Cape” became synonymous with yellow in a diamond. Further clarification included illusionary modifiers like “top-silver”, which described a diamond that “faced-up” silver-ish rather than white from the top.

To make a long story shorter, after a series of retail methods failed to consistently classify even the best color, first as A Quality, then AA Quality, then AAA, then AAAA, approaching ad infinitum, the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) finally adopted “D” as their top color choice on lab reports. They reasoned that it sounded “scientific” and that no self-respecting salesman would ever stoop to such language.

That’s not exactly what happened next…