Diamonds vary enormously in colour with most of them carrying subtle tones of yellow, and brown. Very few are truly colourless, and these are the rarest and most highly valued.
An unskilled eye may struggle to differentiate between two adjacent grades of colour, but qualified AnchorCert gemmologists, assisted by a diamond light and GIA master “comparison stones” (diamonds graded and recorded at the Gemological Institute of America) can accurately classify diamonds according to internationally recognised colour grading scales. The colour scale starts at D (colourless) and ends at Z (light). Following on from Z, diamonds are graded as ‘Fancy colours’.
‘Fancy’ coloured diamonds are rare, attractive and desirable, and command high prices. They exist in various hues of yellow, orange, pink, red, green and blue.
