Color counts among the key factors that are used to assess a diamond’s quality.

Most diamonds have a yellowish tint, which is almost invisible to the naked eye, but does impact the final price. The less saturated the color, the more expensive the gem. A perfect diamond needs to be completely colorless and transparent; this allows light to pass through it without hindrance, creating the famous radiance.

Today’s most common diamond classifier, used to evaluate and sell almost all diamonds around the world, was developed by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). This classifier helps determine the diamond’s «colorlessness» level by comparing several gems under a white spotlight against a standard white background. Once thus appraised, a diamond receives a letter grade, from D (for completely colorless gems) to Z (for gems with a clearly visible light yellow tint). This grade, along with other parameters (carat weight, clarity, and cut quality) is what influence’s the diamond’s price.

Apart from colorless diamonds, there also are fancy colored diamonds, ranging from pink to orange, blue, green, and other shades. Colored diamonds are rightly considered unique: statistics show that only one rough diamond in 10 thousand has a color. Interest in colored diamonds has grown notably over the past few years.

The color scale used to evaluate colored diamonds includes 27 different shades and 9 levels of color lightness and saturation (brightness), making for over 250 color varieties in total. The brighter and more saturated the color, the more expensive the diamond. Diamonds with rare tints (blue, pink, or green) are also among the most expensive. These are the gems that break records at international auctions.