While there is a lot of information available about how you should choose white diamonds, there is not nearly enough when it comes to fancy yellow diamonds like those available from Leibish & Co. To give you some helpful advice if you are looking to purchase a yellow diamond, let’s first look briefly at what yellow diamonds are and why concentrating on the colour more than anything else is important when you are evaluating them.
What Exactly Are Yellow Diamonds?
Yellow diamonds are probably one of the most popular and common of the fancy-coloured diamonds. When they have a very intense yellow colour they are often referred to as canary diamonds. The bright and vibrant colour is the result of nitrogen impurities inside the diamond’s crystal structure. Many yellow diamonds have secondary tones and colours such as green, orange and brown.
A common misconception is that yellow diamonds are just white diamonds with hints of yellow. You can tell the difference by checking the colour grading. White diamonds with tints of yellow are graded from D to Z, while fancy yellow diamonds by Leibish & Co. have a hue that is graded much stronger than Z. It is also important to understand the difference in terms of the intensity of the colour. Unlike white diamonds with hints of yellow, the more intense and vivid the yellow colour is in fancy yellow diamonds, the more valuable they actually are.
How Do You Evaluate Yellow Diamonds?
The most important factor when it comes to the value of yellow diamonds is determined unsurprisingly by their colour. While the carat, clarity and cut are also important, they do not affect the value in quite the same way as the colour.
How to Choose the Right Colour
When you are examining the colour of yellow fancy diamonds you should be looking at 3 important components – the hue, saturation and tone.
The hue is the primary colour of a fancy coloured stone. Therefore, the hue of a yellow diamond is yellow. Certain hues are more valuable than others. Blue diamonds are not as common as yellow diamonds, so the premium is higher.
The secondary hues of fancy diamonds can also increase or decrease the value, but it depends if that hue is rare and if it enhances the main hue or not. Yellow diamonds with a secondary orange hue are more expensive than those with brownish undertones.
The saturation is essentially how strong and intense the diamond’s primary hue is. The general rule of thumb is that the stone with more vivid and stronger tones will cost more.
The tone is the component of the stone’s colour that describes how dark or light the hue is. You will find that the most valuable diamonds, yellow in particular, have a tone that underscores the primary hue, meaning the stone is not too dark or too light.
The above information is not meant to scare you out of buying diamonds because there is so much work involved. Rather we hope that you can use it to choose a diamond that will not only look great right now, but will prove to be a great investment that you could cash in on at a later date.