Fancy diamonds: colour, intensity, and overtone

Once a diamond’s colour is the point — not a faint tint on a white stone — we stop using D–Z. Fancy diamonds are described with three facts that belong together: colour, intensity, and overtone.

Colour (the hue)

Colour here means the hue you name first: yellow, pink, blue, green, orange, brown, and other fancy hues. You compare fancy yellow to fancy yellow, not to a D-colour white diamond. The hue is why someone is in this collection.

Intensity

Intensity is how strongly that hue reads. Trade language uses steps such as fancy light, fancy, fancy intense, fancy vivid, and related grades for how light, dark, or saturated the colour appears. A fancy light yellow and a fancy vivid yellow are not the same shopping decision. Intensity is not a D–Z letter.

Overtone

Overtone is the modifying tone beside the main hue — for example a brownish, orangy, or pinkish influence, or none when the hue is clean. Two pinks can share a name and still look different because one carries an overtone the other does not. That is why overtone is its own field when we add a fancy diamond.

What fancy is not

• Not D–Z. If the stone is a white diamond, it goes in white.
• Not black. Black diamonds have their own collection.
• Not CVD. Laboratory growth is not a fancy hue. We do not list CVD in this catalog.

When you enquire, name the hue you want and, if you have a report, the intensity and overtone. We will match from the fancy collection on this site.