Fancy Diamonds

Though most popular diamonds are the clear, colorless diamonds but diamonds are available in all the colors of the rainbow- blue, pink, green etc. In spite of more significance of these diamonds owing to their rare occurrence, our culture puts more emphasis on the perfect colorless diamonds.
Most colored diamonds found in the market are artificially colored by various laboratory techniques. This is done by adding the same element to it that naturally causes the desired color. Sometimes the defect that causes the color is induced. This is called Synthetic Coloring.
Naturally occurring colors of the diamonds are:

Black: They are valued despite being devoid of the fire that is normally viewed to be of prime importance. These diamonds are opaque.
Gray: The defect of this diamond causes it to absorb all wavelengths of light equally rendering the gray color. The Gray can tint almost every other shade.
White: The color of these diamonds is created by tiny inclusions so tiny that their exact cause is not known. These can be distinguished from the colorless diamonds in that they are not clear.
Brown: Due to the least desirability of gem quality brown, the brown diamond is often referred to by elaborate names. For example, Champagne is the code for lightly tinted brown diamond. The presence of these diamonds is in abundance.
Pink & Red: Fairly rare, these diamonds get their color from the irregularity of the growth of the crystal. Pinks often have a purplish tint in them.
Orange: The most infrequently occurring color of fancy diamonds is orange. This diamond often referred to as Apricot, has to have complete absence of brown to come under the category of orange diamonds.
Yellow: The slight yellow color of the diamond is almost always considered as a flaw masked by various settings. But the intense yellow can not be camouflaged by any setting and is much rarer. Shades of dark yellow are sometimes referred to as Canary.
Chameleons: These diamonds have a very atypical property which was discovered by accident. These diamonds, naturally green in color, change to yellow on being stored in darkness for more than 24 hours and back to green in a few minutes on being exposed to light.
Green: What makes this fancy diamond peculiar is that the green color may be patches or only at the surface.
Blue: There is nothing that is not known about the blue diamond. These are also very rare.
Violet: The violet diamond is the rarest of all. In fact there seems no actual purple shade in diamonds and no way to make a diamond purple.

The value of Fancy Diamonds depends on the hue and intensity of the diamond and also the cut and carat. The grading of these stones is determined by its hue. The grading scale of fancy diamonds given by GIA begins with “faint” followed by Very Light, Light, Fancy Light, Fancy, Fancy Dark, Fancy Intense, Fancy Deep and Fancy Vivid, Fancy vivid being the richest and the most valuable of all the others.