Behind The Gems: Coloured Diamonds

“Behind The Gems” is a long-running monthly series that takes you on an exclusive, behind-the-scenes tour of our signature collections.

What image comes to your mind when you hear the word “diamond”?

If you’re picturing something perfectly transparent, with no hue or colour, you’re not wrong. But a diamond is not just that. In fact, diamonds can come in more colours than you imagine.

And below, we’re taking a closer look at the variations.

About Coloured Diamonds

Today, diamonds are the most popular and sought-after stones, especially when it comes to engagement rings. However, things haven’t always been like this. In fact, it wasn’t up until the 1930s, when De Beers started running specific advertising campaigns, that diamonds became a status symbol. The idea stuck and, ever since, diamonds have been the go-to precious stone for many of us.

And there are SO many different variations and options – raw, rough, faceted, beads, drilled… then the colours! There’s a lot to take in, so let’s look at the coloured diamonds that are also featured in our pieces.

Brown Diamonds

Believe is or not, brown is the most common diamond colour. They can be naturally brown and sometimes heat treated for better clarity and colour. Typically, they account for 15% of the diamonds produced from any given mine.

Traditionally they were only used for industrial applications, because they were, well… brown. For this reason, they’re new to the precious stone market. So new, in fact, that there is no clear colour grading for them just yet. They have been slowly gaining traction as of late and they are called the yummiest of names: chocolate, coffee, cognac or caramel diamonds.

We used a brown faceted diamond bead in our Ruby Snake Necklace:

 

Black Snake & Red Tiger Eye Necklace

Black Diamonds

Black diamonds get their colour from the large number of minute inclusions (particularly graphite, pyrite and hematite) that prevent light from refracting through the stone. Typically, the stones are quite opaque and have a high lustre, which gives them more of a metallic feel compared to other diamonds.

One of the pieces that we have made using black diamonds is the Raw Black Diamond Necklace. We opted to use “raw” or irregularly faceted stones in order to give the piece a more earthy feel:

Raw Black Diamond Necklace

Pink Diamonds

Popular in all their various hues, pink diamonds get their colour during the formation process: heat and pressure caused their lattice to distort and absorb a particular band of green light, resulting in their pink hues.

Known as fancy colour diamond (along with yellow and blue diamonds) due to their rarity, their value is determined by the four Cs (cut, colour, clarity and carats). Hue, saturation and tone of the stone are also considered.

Pink diamonds feature in our Sapphire Dreamcatcher. We have chosen them to add a bit of warmth and intrigue to the piece. Take a look:

Sapphire Dreamcatcher

Yellow Diamonds

Yellow diamonds get their colour from the nitrogen atoms in their lattice, which absorb blue light and reflect yellow light.

Like pink diamonds, they are classed as fancy coloured diamonds and have an additional colour grading system based on their hue, saturation and tone.

So far, we have used them in the white and rose gold diamond bar bracelets. Even though we adore the results, keep your eyes peeled, as we will experiment with the white gold bracelet some more. Here they are:

 

White Gold Diamond Bar Bracelet

Rose Gold Yellow Diamond Bar Bracelet

 

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