What Gives Natural Diamonds Their Color
Many people recognize the Hope diamond as the large blue diamond in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. Natural colored diamonds are rare and they come in a variety of colors. White diamonds are pure carbon with no impurities. According to the Natural Color Diamond Association colored diamonds can get their color from impurities that get mixed in with the pure carbon. The more of the impurity the stronger the color. With other colored diamonds it is the environment that the diamonds grew in gave them color. Colored diamonds can have modified colors like “greenish-yellow,” or “Purplish-Pink.”
Yellow Diamonds: Nitrogen atoms mixed in.
Pink Diamonds: Pink diamonds are a result of a distortion of the diamond crystal structure when formed.
Green Diamonds: This color is caused by naturally occurring radiation within the earth.
Orange Diamonds: Nitrogen atoms that are arranged differently from the ones that cause the yellow color are mixed in.
Brown Diamonds: These brown diamonds are sometimes called champagne, chocolate, or cognac. Distortion of the crystal lattice when these diamonds were formed caused them to absorb light differently and show the brown spectrum.
Red Diamonds: They are so rare that there is little gemological information on what colors them.
Blue Diamonds: Boron mixed in.
