What is color? Mother Nature creates diamonds in different colors. These differences in color are very subtle. Think of color like the difference between crystal clear spring water and lemonade. Some diamonds lack any tint or body tone and are clear as icy spring water. These icy “white” diamonds provide the perfect backdrop for displaying the inner- blaze that result from a diamond’s unique optical properties.Other diamonds with varying tinges of yellow look as if a glass of water had drops of lemon squeezed in until it became lemonade, this added color mutes the powerful inner-blaze. Perrywinkle’s places such a high importance on color relative to nearby stores or online. Grading When we say “color” we really mean “absence-of-color” since the best color is no color at all. “Color” is different yet interactive with “fire,” which is diamond’s unique ability to bend light like a prism producing bright inner flashes of reds, blues, and greens. Fire is one of the reasons diamonds are so eye appealing. What are the color grades? The highest grade is “D color” all the way down to “Z.” The reason the GIA’s scale originates with D instead of A is to avoid confusion with the many competing color-grading scales that were in existence years ago. Body-tones are usually yellow but can also be brown or gray. D, E, F D Completely colorless. Very rare. The highest grade. Perrywinkle’s strongly recommends this color. E Colorless. Minute traces of body-tone detectable to an experienced gemologist. No perceptible difference in body-tone from D once the diamond is set into jewelry. Rare. Very high grade. Perrywinkle’s strongly recommends this color. F Completely colorless. Very rare. The highest grade. Perrywinkle’s strongly recommends this color. G, H G Near colorless. Body-tone is readily detectable to an experienced gemologist. Slightly noticeable difference from colorless diamonds when compared side-by-side in a setting. Still a high grade color that Perrywinkle’s recommends. H Near colorless. Body-tone readily detectable to a novice when compared side-by-side with colorless diamonds. Significant difference from colorless diamonds when compared side-by-side in a setting. A higher than average grade color that is still recommended by Perrywinkle’s
I, J I Near colorless. Body-tone easily detectable to a novice when compared side-by-side with colorless diamonds. Significant difference from colorless diamonds when compared side-by-side in a setting. A respectable color grade especially if used in yellow gold. J Near colorless. Body-tone is obvious to a novice when looking for it. Near colorless is its official technical term but it is not near colorless in reality. Body-tone is less noticeable if set in yellow gold and may appear one to two color grades higher if medium to strong fluorescence is present.Recommended only in some circumstances. K-W Faint to Light color.The body-tone is so obvious that it detracts from the diamond’s beauty. Not recommended unless you require a particular size for your diamond yet have a limited budget. X, Y, Z If the body tone is yellow then it looks somewhere between lemonade and the sun.In certain cases, it can be set into jewelry so that it appears as if it’s “Fancy Yellow.”This is desirable because its price will be much lower than that of a Fancy Yellow. Fancy Some diamonds look as if a glass of spring water had drops of lemonade squeezed into it. Keep squeezing in lemon juice until a diamond becomes intense like the sun then movie stars wear them. That’s because when they’re super-saturated with yellow (or other colors) they’re much scarcer than icy white ones and they are classified as fancy-colored. Perrywinkle’s can show you ones that look like lemon supreme (or other colors) then explain factors such as hue and saturation that affect their price.
