The 7380 Colored Diamonds Color Combinations

Colored diamonds come in all shapes, sizes and… colors.

The number of color combinations is actually quite astounding. The color scale is based on the basic colors of Yellow, Green, Brown, Orange, Gray, Pink, Purple, Violet, Blue and Red. To those you can add the two bit exceptional colors of black and white (fancy white) - which brings it to a total of 12 base colors.

Colored Diamonds Color Intensities

However, the story is far from ending there. When grading the color of a colored diamond we also grade it by the color's intensity. There are nine intensity levels: Faint, Very Light, Light, Fancy Light, Fancy, Fancy Dark, Fancy Deep, Fancy Intense and Fancy Vivid. Note that the difference in color saturation means a completely different look for the diamond - a Fancy Deep Yellow Diamond is vastly different than a Fancy Yellow and from a Fancy Vivid Yellow - The differences are also in the rarity, the demand and last but not least - the price.

It is true that not all colors come in all intensities. For example there is no Light Yellow (but rather Y-Z diamonds), reds come only in fancy and there are no vivid or intense browns. However, to simplify the math and to make the point we will assume that we have about nine intensities and 10 colors.

One would think that it means that there are 90 colors for colored diamonds (9 intensities multiplied by 10 colors). This fact is astounding on its own, especially considering that white diamonds are graded using 17 colors (lower colors of colorless diamonds are grouped together - D E F G H I J K L M N (O P) (Q R) (S T) (U V) (W X) (Y Z)).

In this case - one would be wrong!

What About Diamond's Secondary Colors? And a Third?

This is where the world of colored diamonds actually gets interesting. While most people would ask for a yellow or brown diamond, the basic fact is that most fancy colored diamonds cannot be described based on one color - but rather based on a combination of colors.

Remember when you were kids and played with the brush, mixing colors over and over again – now that's what colored diamonds are all about!

A colored diamond usually has more than one color (regardless of the intensity) - it is not a pure fancy yellow or a plain pink (even though there is nothing plain in pink) - it is an orange yellow diamond, a yellowish green, a purplish pink and sometimes it is even a gray yellowish green - a combination of three.

The second and third colors can be mentioned by their regular names (brown, orange, yellow etc.) or if they have weak saturation, a weak presence, then as yellowish, greenish, orangy etc.

Important Note – The dominant color of the diamond is the last one mentioned in the color description. Meaning, a pink brown diamond is a brown diamond with a secondary pink color while a brown pink diamond is the exact opposite - a pink diamond with a brown secondary hue - a much more valuable option.

Why 7380 Diamond Colors?

Let's compile what we have till now -
10 base colors, 9 color intensities, 1, 2 or 3 color combinations plus 2 color saturation levels =
90 pure colors in various intensities +
90 colors * 9 secondary colors +
(90 colors * 9 secondary colors) * 8 third colors + ….
This is not exactly true since not all combinations really exist, however, since we are not mathematicians, at this stage we will stop - but you get the point.

So… How many Diamond Colors are there really?

While searching for an exact and accurate number for this article we came across many versions, most in the range of 200-300 diamond colors.

However, this is just the number of graded color descriptions. The fact is that there is practically an endless amount of diamond colors. Since each diamond is also cut differently the color reflects a bit different and so on and so on - truly a world of endless possibilities - no two diamonds are alike!

With that in mind, in order to put things into order, we decided to show you the most popular color combinations: