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Color

Our standard beginning of diamond is as a colorless stone. But color in diamond exists in countless variations, from dazzling pinks and yellows to blues and violet. A chemically-pure, wonderful crystal of diamond is colorless, but adds a little nitrogen and yellow appears. Add boron as a substitute and a blue diamond results. Colors from red to violet, real white, and black are possible and can be complex to recognize scientifically. Colored diamonds are sizzling, both in the marketplace and in science.

To understand color in diamond, one must keep in mind that light is a form of energy. In this image of the visible spectrum, low energy is at the bottom and high energy at the top. Each color of the rainbow corresponds to an exacting energy. When the energy of light entering a diamond equals the amount required to bump an electron to another configuration, parts of the spectrum are absorbed. A pure diamond is colorless because visible light lacks sufficient energy to excite any of its electrons and hence no light is absorbed. Though, impurities like nitrogen, boron or hydrogen, as well as structural flaws, can create electron states which can be affected by the energy in visible light. In the diamond pictured, the higher energies of violet and blue light are subtracted from white light making the diamond appear yellow.

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