About Diamond Colors

Jewelry-quality diamonds: Trace nitrogen, by far the most common impurity, imparts a yellow or yellowish-brown tint to diamonds. This color, from "Colorless" through "Light Yellow" is graded on the D-Z letter scale, established by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) and adopted by most major reputable gemological laboratories:

Colorless diamonds, being the rarest and most generally admired in this sequence, command the highest prices. The fainter shades of yellow are generally deemed progressively less attractive, which strongly affects their market value. Otherwise identical diamonds of D color sell for about ten times as much per carat as do those of M color. 
 
"Fancy-colored" diamonds:  Intensely yellow diamonds, or those with unusual impurities such as chromium or boron, may display colors that are considered attractive in their own right. Although they are not nearly as highly regarded as are colorless diamonds, the increasing popularity of these rarer "fancy-colored" diamonds has helped some to dramatically increase in value. Indeed, it is rumored that the very most expensive diamond ever auctioned at Sotheby's is an exceedingly rare purplish-red gem that sold for an astonishing $900,000 per carat. The relative beauty of colored diamonds is very subjective, however, and the colors tend to mask clarity defects. Their quality is therefore less amenable to rational analysis. They are examples of "beauty in the eye of the beholder". 
 
The term 'fancy' is sometimes abused to artificially puff the apparent value of a diamond, particularly when applied to the fainter yellow grades. If it is lighter than about P or Q "Very Light Yellow", a diamond's color should always be regarded, for valuation purposes, as a grade of colorlessness, rather than as a fancy color. Our formulas assess only diamonds with color grades from D "Colorless" through M "Faint Yellow". Their appraised value is not influenced by whether or not they are also described as "fancy". Only the intense yellow grades well beyond about P should rightly be included among the "fancy" colors.

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