Coloured Diamonds

Coloured diamonds are a sub-category, or classification within the range of naturally occurring diamonds, which are mined all over the world.

Often referred to as “fancy coloured diamonds”, some colours are rarer than others and the value of each different coloured diamond is mostly determined by how rare that particular colour is in nature.

The least rare of the natural coloured diamonds are the champagne/cognac (brown) colours, followed by yellow, then pink, blue, green, orange, purple and red.

Many of the most famous diamonds in the world are coloured diamonds, understandably so because throughout history the rarest and most exquisite diamonds were bound up in the fortunes of royalty and the rich and famous. Whereas for white (or colourless) diamonds, the colour grading scale goes from D to Z, for natural coloured diamonds the generally accepted terms range from “deep” to “vivid”, “ fancy intense”, “fancy”, “light” and lastly, “faint” (which is almost colourless).

Within the world of natural coloured diamonds, those which exhibit “deep” or “vivid” colour are very much rarer than the others and consequently their values are substantially higher. Fancy yellow coloured diamonds are probably the most popular because of their relative affordability as well as their happy “sunny” colour and the fact that they are available in larger sizes.

After the yellows, the best sellers would be the earthy, brown coloured diamonds, variously referred to as “champagne”, “cognac”, “chocolate”, “cinnamon” and so on. These diamonds are popular because of the wide colour palette they embrace, from pale straw to deep brown and because of their affordability, being the cheapest of the natural coloured diamonds. They can often be a great match with the wearers eye colour, hair colour or skin tone. Amongst the rarest and most famous fancy coloured diamonds are the pink diamonds. Pink diamonds, unlike the yellows and browns, are found in very few diamond mines and more than 90% of the world’s supply of pink diamonds come from the Argyle diamond mine in Western Australia.