Gemstone Color

Color is of course quite important to the beauty and value of a gemstone. Grading of gemstone color is comprised of 3 components:

• Hue – this speaks to your initial impression of the color of the gemstone. Is it bluish green? Yellowish green? Reddish purple? Whatever it is, it is considered to be the hue. The hue is then modified by the tone and saturation which we will talk about now.
• Saturation – this basically refers to the brightness of the hue and how much color is present in the stone.
• Tone – is how light or dark a gemstone is. As far as gemstone color goes, you want the color to be rich but you don’t want it to be so dark that you can’t make out the color and you don’t want it to be too light because that gives the stone a “washed out” look. Intense medium colors are generally going to be the richest, most vibrant colors.

Finding the perfect balance of all three of these components of colors is difficult and rare, so the closer to the ideal color you get, the more valuable the stone becomes