I’m going to change it up a little bit. Instead of starting with the basics of understanding diamonds, I’m going to start with some of the nuances, and then work back to things like cut, color, clarity, and carat. The nuance I want to delve into with this factoid has to do with “blue diamonds”
What is a blue diamond? How does a diamond get classified as “over-blue?” Is this a good thing or a bad thing? If you are a Newbie, you probably have this really cool picture in your head of an icy blue sparkling diamond. Maybe your mind’s eye sees a stone that looks like a watered down sapphire. That would be cool, I can picture it myself. But flip that slide; this is not what a blue diamond is.
What is good, or bad, about the effect of boron atoms, trapped in the crystalline lattice structure of carbon atoms that make up this precious gem, is up to you to decide. Before you can play the blue effect to your advantage when purchasing a diamond, obviously, you need to understand what it is. Here I will explain:
Fluorescence: The keyword that describes what is going on within that beautiful little stone, as the full spectrum of both visible and invisible light bounces around the precision cut facets of a diamond -with trapped boron atoms. UV light, which occurs at different levels in any natural or man-made light source, causes the boron in the diamond to glow with that same bluish hue as your teeth do when exposed to a black light, you know, like at a night club. For this reason, miners utilize ultra violet light to discover diamonds.
The positive effect of this light play in a diamond, sprinkled internally with some boron atoms, is that it can make a diamond with a slightly yellow tint, appear whiter. You will learn that in most cases, color is not a good thing in diamonds. It is a drawback, like an inclusion (flaw) that requires a weight on the negative side of the scale when you are balancing out the value of a particular stone. Less than 1% of diamonds are judged negatively because of florescence, which is evaluated at: none, faint, medium, strong, and very strong. Too much boron can cause a diamond to loose it’s transparency, and appear “milky” -not a good trait.
So as you move around the weights on the scale, judging these little stones, searching for the perfect one to call your own…Or, all hers; florescence is a tough call. Here is a list of facts to bounce around, so that you can use the florescence level of the diamond to leverage the best choice:
- Pros as well as the most educated consumers have a difficult time judging florescence in most normal lighting conditions.
- Strong fluorescence in a diamond can bring down the price of a diamond.
- This invisible impurity can step the stone up a notch on the visible purity scale.
- Presenting a blue diamond under the best light, halogen for instance, can make the value of that diamond hit your girl in the face like a cream pie.
- Watch out for over blue, and therefore cloudy diamonds.
- Be sure the actual color scale of the diamond is only effected positively by the naked eye. On paper (the certificate) the boron should not make up for the true color of the appraised diamond.
- To judge this for yourself, look at the stone in sunlight and incandescent light, even a black light -if you really want to show the jeweler you are taking this purchase seriously and you know your stuff.
