What Exactly is Blue Nuance in Lab-Grown Diamonds?
Some lab-grown diamonds may have a little blue tinge when the light passes through them. This is known as blue nuance. Diamonds created in a laboratory using the high pressure-high temperature method develop a blue nuance. However, not all HPTP diamonds possess blue nuances. You will easily come across well-made icy white diamonds with no bluish or greenish undertones.
During the process of growing a lab diamond, boron needs to be introduced to remove nitrogen. Boron also helps speed up the process of growth for diamonds. However, removing boron after being introduced can be quite challenging and expensive. Natural diamonds also develop a blue hue from the presence of boron during their formation. When boron is not removed properly, excess boron present in a lab grown diamonds after the growth process causes it to have blue nuances.
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Colorful diamonds are just as popular and in demand as white, colorless ones. However, a fancy blue-colored lab-grown diamond and a lab-grown diamond with blue nuances are not entirely the same. Diamonds with a blue nuance have a few spots where you can notice the color, while other parts of the diamond are colorless just like a regular white diamond. Therefore, these diamonds have faint blue tinges here and there.
Blue diamonds have a more saturated color which is easily observable. A major part of the diamond appears blue and it cannot be classified as a colorless diamond. However, there are different types of colored diamonds based on the intensity of the color, such as faint, very light, light, fancy light, fancy intense, fancy vivid, and fancy deep.
Diamonds with blue nuances are often considered diamonds with fluorescence. However, the blue color from fluorescence is only observed under UV light. Moreover, fluorescence can be caused by the presence of nitrogen and aluminum besides boron, and they can develop a range of colors, such as orange, red, yellow, green, etc. Blue nuance, unlike fluorescence, appears irrespective of the type of lighting they are in.
Are Blue Nuance Diamonds Bad?
It is more common for people to opt for colorless lab-created diamonds. However, diamonds with blue nuances can be considered just as unique as colorful diamonds. If you would like the diamond on your engagement ring to have a faint blue tint, there is no reason for you to not go for a diamond with a blue nuance.
However, a lab-grown diamond exhibiting a blue nuance does not read as a real diamond despite being real. With that said, one of the advantages of buying diamonds with blue nuances is that they’re considerably less expensive compared to colorless lab-grown diamonds. If you’re shopping on a budget and would want your diamond to have a unique touch, a blue nuance diamond can be one of the options.
How to Discover Blue Nuance in Lab-Grown Diamonds?
Blue nuances are quite subtle, unlike colorful diamonds. However, they can be observed with the naked eye. While your diamond will look white from most angles, it will have a peculiar bluish undertone when the light passes through it. While most blue nuance diamonds have a noticeable tinge to them, it may not be true for every lab-grown diamond with a blue nuance. Some may need a lab diamond expert to determine if the diamond has a blue nuance. However, once you notice this detail, it is next to impossible to unsee it.
Does Blue Nuance Affect Grading?
As already mentioned, lab-grown diamonds with blue nuances are closer in resemblance to colorless diamonds than colored diamonds as the blue tinge is extremely subtle. Therefore, they are graded as colorless diamonds. However, in terms of classification, both blue-colored diamonds and those with blue nuances fall under type IIb diamonds, which are known to be extremely rare.
They are both capable of conducting electricity, which makes them conductive, and both these diamonds contain boron as impurities. However, it is also worth mentioning that colorless diamonds with blue nuances are considered type IIb diamonds and not type IIa diamonds only when they contain boron in measurable amounts.
A certified diamond that is electrically conductive because of the presence of boron may also easily pass for moissanite, as electrical conductivity is one of the tests used to check the authenticity of diamonds. However, blue nuanced diamonds are real diamonds just like their colorless counterparts.
Just like natural or mined diamonds, lab-grown diamonds are also graded based on their characteristics, such as cut, carat, color, and clarity. The presence of color in diamonds with blue nuances is recorded and graded from a range of D to Z. This means the grade of the diamond is lower when the amount of blue in the diamond is less subtle and more observable. A diamond with a low grade is comparatively less expensive than diamonds with higher color grades. Therefore, it is essential that you get the diamond inspected by a lab diamond expert to ensure its color grading.
Strategies to Avoid Diamonds with a Blue Nuance
While not common, unreliable sellers may try to sell a blue nuance diamond at the price of a colorless diamond when the blue color is not very noticeable. Moreover, Blue nuances can also sometimes be tricky to capture in images and videos. This is one of the reasons why it is important to take the right steps to avoid buying a blue nuance diamond when your choice of diamond is colorless. Here are some strategies you can adopt to avoid diamonds with a blue nuance.
- View HD Imagery
Irrespective of the type of diamond you buy, when you are making the purchase from an online seller, it can be useful to view HD imagery of a high-definition video of it. It is all the more important when you buy a lab-grown diamond because of the chances of it being a blue nuance diamond.
- Check Its Certificate
As mentioned already, lab-grown diamonds with blue nuances also get graded based on the 4Cs. However, it might not always be easy to identify from its grading if the diamond has a blue nuance. In this case, you can check the comments section of a diamond’s report, where it is generally clearly mentioned if the diamond has a blue nuance.
- See It In Person
Going to the seller and taking a careful look at the diamond is the best way to ensure you’re not buying a blue nuance lab-grown diamond. Since the blue colors of these diamonds are visible to the naked eye when in well-lit settings, there’s a good chance that you will be able to clearly tell.
The Bottom Line
While lab-grown diamonds are just as real as mined diamonds, they are capable of having imperfections given how complex the process of creating diamonds in a laboratory can be. Therefore, it is necessary that you read about different types of imperfections in terms of color, clarity, and cut so that you know what to look out for when you plan to buy a lab-grown diamond that is as close to perfect as it can get.
