Diamonds are a Girls....

Since I deal mainly in untreated gemstones, I have stayed away from using colored diamonds.  Most of them are irradiated and while I make exceptions for heat treatment, irradiation is a no go - it's the reason I don't carry Morganite.

In the last few months, however, I started to increasingly play with natural yellow and pink diamonds, so I thought it might be fun to share some of my insights, and offer out colored diamond melee for custom designs.

There are only a few natural colors of diamonds: yellow, pink, orange and cognac (to browns), blue, grey, and green.  There are very few natural red diamonds, but those are out of all of our price ranges.  All of these colors are ranked by intensity.  The more intense, the more expensive.  The lighter colors have to be used in bunches, and should be set in the right color gold to enhance them (so pink diamonds should be set in rose gold).
 
Natural pinks are the most expensive.  They are usually Australian, from the Argyle mines.  They cost up to $50,000 per carat in the melee sizes.  Here are a few that are lower priced (meaning $3000-12000 per carat).  The colors are Fancy Light Pink, Fancy Light Pink, and Fancy Intense Pink.

Fancy Natural Pink Diamonds

Fancy Pink Diamond and Tourmaline

Fancy Pink Diamonds, Mahenge Spinel and Tourmaline

Yellow diamonds mainly come from the Argyle mines as well, though some of them can be from India.  Here are the more affordable shades of yellow.  They are $1000-3000 per carat.  They are called Fancy Light Yellow, Fancy Yellow, Fancy Intense Yellow and Fancy Vivid Yellow.  Fancy intense is my favorite.

Fancy Light Yellow, Yellow, Intense Yellow and Vivid Yellow

Fancy Yellow Diamonds, Malaya Garnet and Mahenge Spinel

Fancy Intense Yellow and Mahenge Spinel

My favorite new colors were blue and grey, however.  Those diamonds come from Easy Africa.  The grey of these diamonds is not created by black piques (inclusions) but is actually in the body color of the gem.  I am adding a photo of white diamonds for comparison.  They greys are $2500 a carat, the blues are (sticker shock alert): $23000.  Note that my markup is not my standard, it is a much lower add on because that's how this works.  Diamonds are high priced and thus have lower markups than colored stones.

Natural White Diamonds (F Color)

Fancy Greyish Blue Diamond with Vietnamese Spinel

Natural White, Fancy Greyish Blue and Fancy Blue Diamonds

Fancy Greyish Blue Diamonds with Mahenge Spinel

Fancy Blue Diamonds with Tourmaline

Fancy Greyish Blue Diamonds with Hauynite

I could have taken oodles more photos but this is all there was time for.  The dabs of colored stones are giving you some ideas of how to make designs.

Below is a diamond melee size chart so you can calculate costs.