Are Pink Diamonds Real Diamonds?

1. 100% perfect diamonds are clear but usually lab created.
2. Naturally occurring diamonds almost always have a slight hue or color.
3. Pink colored diamonds can be real or lab-created.

The Perfectly Clear Diamond

A perfectly clear diamond is hard to find in the natural world. When a diamond has no color or hue, its structure is 100% perfect, and the diamond contains no chemical impurities. The best way to ensure these perfect conditions is to create diamonds in a lab. Indeed, most perfectly clear diamonds are lab-created.

Because nature is filled with structural oddities and chemical varieties, almost all real diamonds have some tint in them.

Colors of Naturally Occurring Diamonds

In the world of diamonds, perfection is not measured by laboratory definitions. Consider the Hope Diamond, the famous blue-tinted jewel housed in Washington DC’s National Museum of Natural History. Valued in the hundreds of millions, and famous for its storied history, the gem’s value lies in its unique, spectacular, and natural blue-tint.

Real diamonds can be found in a variety of hues. Most naturally mined diamonds have a slightly yellow or brown tint. However, diamonds can naturally occur across the full color spectrum, from blue to red and white to black. Jewelers and diamond traders use grading scales to classify diamonds by color. While most light yellow diamonds range from ‘colorless’ to ‘low color,’ the grade scales include ‘high color’ grades to describe the full variety of nature’s spectacular diamonds.

Natural Pink Diamonds

Pink diamonds do occur in nature and are highly prized these days. In 2014, a natural, 8.41-carat pink diamond sold for 17 million dollars, setting a new world record. Popular affection for pink-tinted diamonds was helped along by one of Jennifer Lopez’s engagement rings, although naturally pink diamonds are featured in European crown jewels and in the jewelry of Indian and Middle Eastern royalty.

Natural pink diamonds are classified as type IIa diamonds and are very rare. Their classification type makes up only about 2% of all naturally occurring diamonds. The pink hue comes from a unique crystal structure formed under special pressure and temperature conditions. There is an especially rich mine of pink diamonds in Western Australia although the first pink diamonds were discovered in India. A truly special gem, natural pink diamonds are beloved the world over.