Natural VS. Color Enhanced Diamonds.

                                             Color Enhanced Diamonds?

       Recently, our boutique had bought a 3 carat canary colored diamond. It was color enhanced, since this was my first encounter with such a stone, I began a feverish search for the pros and cons of the stone.  Quick lesson, diamonds are made from carbon, diamonds are the hardest known substance to man and are both a naturally occurring and manufactured abrasive. It takes a diamond 1 to 3 billion years to form beneath the earth. Once formed, a diamond travels to the earth’s surface via streams of molten rock. Throughout this process, natural diamonds acquire inclusions and or flaws within them that give them their own unique “fingerprint”.
      Diamonds can be purchased in various sizes (carats), shapes, colors, and clarities. Natural diamonds are preferred over enhanced or treated diamonds because of their rarity and individual fingerprint. No two natural diamonds in the world are identical; each one is unique whether it’s because of its color or clarity or both combined. Now, here comes the deceiving part.
       The term “enhanced” may sound like a positive feature, however, any diamond that has been enhanced has been treated and altered from its natural condition to artificially improve its appearance. If you decide to purchase an “enhanced” diamond, find out what kind of treatments have been used and how they might affect the value of the diamond. You should also be concerned with the long term care and appearance these enhancement treatments may have on the diamond, as enhancements sometimes result in discoloration or cracks in the diamond.
         Enhanced diamonds, unlike high quality natural diamonds are natural diamonds that have had very specific treatments done to them to improve their characteristics, or their natural “flaws”. One type of treatment is laser drilling, which is a process that removes minor inclusions in a diamond to produce a clarity enhanced diamond. This process will typically create lines that resemble tiny trails, which are visible under side-view magnification. The laser may dissipate the imperfection, or chemicals may be injected into the resulting tunnel to bleach away the color. This is a more permanent process than fracture filling. However, it is highly debated whether or not this process damages the integrity of the diamonds, thereby decreasing the value of clarity enhanced diamonds in the long term.
           Fracture filling is a treatment that adds a glass-like resin material to a natural diamond to close small cracks. Since the filling has the same optical illusion and refraction index as a natural diamond, it’s nearly impossible to detect the “repair” to the flaws. Fracture filling is not a permanent treatment as heat from future repairs, cleanings, and even sunlight can erode the filler or possibly darken its color, making the diamond less valuable as time goes on.
          There are different ways to detect if a diamond has had clarity enhancement treatments done to it. As mentioned above, laser drilling results in very thin, white lines or tunnels within the diamond that do not follow the pattern of the loose diamond. When fracture filling is used, the diamond may appear flawless when viewed from the top, but careful examination from the sides or other angles may reveal flashes of color that disrupt the pattern of facets in the diamond. Fracture filled diamonds may also have air bubbles trapped within them. Because these hints are only visible from the sides, it is very important to examine the diamond closely and preferable as a loose diamond rather than set into a diamond ring setting.  I hope you learned as much as I did my diamond loving friends!!