Adoration grows for colored diamonds

Melanie Erickson has never liked diamonds all that much.

Until she noticed champagne-colored diamonds six years ago at markets and gem shows she visited for her Sioux Falls, S.D., business, the Bead Co.

"I've never been a diamond person, but the minute I saw them I fell in love with them."

Now she owns a princess-cut champagne colored diamond ring with two bands of champagne diamonds surrounding the main stone.

"I like things to be antique or have an eclectic look. It's not the same thing as everyone else has. It's something original and unique." The champagne- or cognac-colored diamonds look soft and antique, says the 34-year-old beader and jewelry designer.

Colored diamonds are popular but they aren't really new, says Paul Curtin, owner of Raymond's Jewellers in Sioux Falls. "I've carried them for 20 years."

Jerry Ehrenwald, president and CEO of the International Gemological Institute agrees. Natural colored diamonds have always been around, he says.

Colored diamonds can be purchased from department stores to upscale jewelers. They are experiencing an uptick in popularity, although demand has varied over the years.

"Demand has grown in the last decade as a result of Hollywood," says Ehrenwald, who is a graduate gemologist and a senior member of the American Society of Appraisers.

The diamond company, De Beers, had an overabundance of brown diamonds and renamed them champagne and cognac to make them more desirable, says Alon Spektor, co-owner of The Diamond Room in Sioux Falls. "A champagne is a glorified brown diamond."

The gimmick caught on. After all, people have their own tastes about what's beautiful.

And celebrities helped.

Actress Cameron Diaz once wore a 20-carat cognac-colored diamond at the Academy Awards and Jennifer Love-Hewitt wore a 7-carat brown diamond ring, according to the Web site of the Natural Color Diamond Association, an international trade organization that is an authority on natural color diamonds.

Celebrities get national attention for what they wear on the red carpet, and that translates into an increased demand for colored diamonds, jewelers say.

There are more than 300 colors of natural diamonds including pink, blue, yellow and green. Red is the most rare natural diamond. The most intensely colored stones are called fancies and are more rare and valuable than colorless diamonds. For example, a deep canary yellow diamond or a naturally occurring blue diamond are more valuable and costly than their colorless cousins.

"The color is what determines the price," says Spektor.

When grading the color of colorless diamonds, a grade of D, or colorless, is the most sought after, says the IGI Web site. The further down in the alphabet, the more color is present, so the diamond is less valuable per carat, Ehrenwald says. However, once the grade goes past Z, the diamonds "start to appreciate ... (and they) pick up so much body color that it becomes attractive."

Trace elements in the stone help determine the color. Over the millennium, naturally occurring radiation and intense pressure colors the stones. Nitrogen imparts a yellow or orange shade, boron gives a blue shade and hydrogen produces violet shades in a diamond.

"It's the originality" of the colored diamonds, says Erickson. "People are realizing they don't have to do the same thing as everybody else."

And of all the luxuries you could spend your money on, be it furs, cars or diamonds, Ehrenwald says, "diamonds hold their value."

(c) 2008, USA TODAY International. Distributed by Tribune Media Services International.