Colored Diamond Grading

G.I.A. has recently updated it's colored diamond grading scale. Here is a break-down of the new system:

Fancy: Any diamond that is not white, with noticable color other than gray or intense yellow. These colors include brown, blue, red, pink, green, orange, champagne, and canary yellow.

This catagory is broken into sub-catagories:

            Faint (a trace of color)

            Very Light/Light (noticable but very light)

            Fancy Light (definate color-light to medium)

            Fancy Dark (very definate color-medium to dark)

The saturation and depth of color is graded as::

Fancy Intense (definate color-medium intensity)

Fancy Vivid (definate color-very vivid)

Fancy Deep (definate color-vivid, deep hue)

These colors may be tinged with brown, gray, or other unrelated colors such as red, orange, blue, green, yellow, etc.

The more vivid and clean the color, the better the diamond, although even mixed colors can fetch a premium price if strong enough.