The 4 C’s Dissected-Part 2-Color
Welcome to part 2 of my attempt to further clarify the 4 C’s and give my opinion on what is REALLY important when buying a diamond.
The color of a diamond refers to, you guessed it, the color! What you are taught at most jewelry stores is that diamond color is graded using the alphabet starting with D being completely colorless and Z being…the opposite I guess. Jewelry store sales people tell people that you should desire a colorless diamond which would fall into the grades D, E, or F but that near colorless–G, H, or I–are pretty good too. This may be true for you, but it it really a personal thing whether you feel you HAVE to have a colorless diamond.
Most diamonds that are found, are not white. Diamonds come in all colors of the rainbow and most diamonds are some shade of grey, brown, or yellow. Red diamonds are the most rare, followed by orange, and then I think green, blue, and yellow. Of course these colors are not set in stone (ha ha) and come in shades–enter your pinks, purples, etc.
The public is taught that they should want a colorless stone, but what you want, is your business. Some off color stones can be really beautiful and if you like the sparkle of a certain stone, you shouldn’t be discouraged because it doesn’t fall into what you are “supposed” to want. Plus, color affects the price of diamonds a lot. You can save money if you buy a stone that doesn’t fall into the D-H color classification.
The exception of course to the idea that diamonds with some color cost less is when you get into diamonds that are certified as being a certain color like yellow or blue. Naturally occurring actual colored diamonds are very rare and can command a very high price. Diamond dealers get around the rarity by treating diamonds to get fancy colors. I will touch more on colored diamonds another time.
Anyways, do not resign yourself to looking for colorless diamonds. When you go for stones that are a little off color, you can up the other 3 C’s and still get a truly beautiful stone. In fact, in some other countries, they usually go for off color diamonds because it is much more important to them to have good clarity rather than good color.
The bottom like when buying a diamond is, find the one that you think is beautiful and fits into your budget, and don’t worry about what everyone else says is good.
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