Perhaps one of the most asked questions for people who don’t know much about the diamond industry is, what color diamond is the most expensive. The truth is, that there is a long answer and a short answer.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that colored diamonds are sought after for good reason. They are beautiful, they have rich colors, and they are rare in nature.
Of course, some colors are rarer than others, causing them to vary in price. The most vibrant and flashy diamonds will always cost the most, but I can hear you asking, ‘just tell me! Which color is the most expensive?’ So today, that is exactly what we are going to analyze, but first, let’s take a little look at what makes a diamond so expensive in the first place.
What makes diamonds so expensive in the first place?
In order to understand which color diamond is the most expensive, first, we have to analyze why are diamonds so sought after and so expensive in the first place.
The honest answer is thanks to basic economics: demand and supply. When there is a small supply of diamond color, the price will increase, and vice versa; when there is a large supply of the color, the price will decrease.
This is just down to basic human nature. Everybody wants to have what no one else has, meaning the rarer a diamond is, the higher chance that no one else is going to have it. So for example, when the likes of Paris Hilton and Jennifer Lopez were proposed to with their pink diamond rings, it would spark an increase in the supply and increase in the demand for diamond rings.
Of course, some colored rings are cheaper than their white counterparts, however, generally, you will find that colored diamonds are more expensive than white. The reason is simple: colored diamonds are extremely rare, making up only 0.1% of the number of my diamonds. This leads to an increase in price since the supply is low, but the demand is still so high.
Where do colored diamonds come from?
It is well known that colored diamonds don’t always come from the same mines as white diamonds.
The best-known source of these fancy beautiful diamonds has been all over the world including India, Australia, South Africa, and many other countries including Brazil, Venezuela, and Indonesia.
The phenomenon of colored diamonds is all thanks to the makeup of the rocks and soil in the nearby mines, even the composition of the earth plays a role in contributing to the chemical impurities that give diamonds their color. Pretty interesting, huh?
But which diamond color is the most expensive?
So, to teach you which diamond color is the most expensive we are going to go through each of them.
Yellow Diamonds
Yellow diamonds alongside brown diamonds are the most common color diamonds. You will find they make up over half of all colored diamonds on the market even though they are still extremely rare. The low price and beautiful colors make it one of the most sought-after colored diamonds on the market.
Yellow diamonds will get their color from an element known as nitrogen. Nitrogen absorbs the blue light in the diamond and creates this beautiful stunning yellow color. Although some diamonds are fully yellow, most are paired with another color, the most common of which is Canary Yellow.
Because they aren’t as rare as other colored diamonds, (remember supply and demand) yellow diamonds cost much less per carat than many other colors of diamonds, even to the point where some yellow diamonds are even less expensive than white diamonds.
If you fancy one for yourself you could expect to pay between $2500 to $4000 per carat on a yellow diamond, for an even fancier one the price can increase from $10,000 even $20,000 per carat.
Oh, and another fun fact since we’re on the topic: the most expensive yellow diamond ever was sold at $16.3 million in 2020.
Pink diamonds
Now even more expensive than the yellow diamonds are these beautiful pink diamonds. Some pink diamonds the rarest of all colors, most of them are found in one single diamond mining location in Australia. Whilst they are slightly less rare than other colors, pink diamonds are amongst the most expensive thanks to the large scale demand for romantic and sweet colors.
What’s best of all is that their beautiful bright pink color remains a mystery to most scientists around the world. The cause of the color remains unknown as they’re made up of total carbon but have a different structure in the crystal to create the beautiful pink color that we know and love.
Just like all other types of diamonds, the price of a pink diamond can depend on many factors, but generally, the price of a beautiful pink diamond can range from over $10,000 all the way up to nearly $1,000,000 for just one carat.
The most famous and most expensive pink diamond ever sold was for $71.2 million in 2017.
Blue diamonds
Now moving onto the second most rare and expensive colored diamond in the world, we have blue diamonds.
These blue diamonds get their gorgeous color from the element boron, which replaces the carbon in its diamond structure. A wide range of blue diamonds is available, from a small dose of light blue to a beautiful deep rich sea blue color.
Since they’re amongst the rarest diamonds in the world, there are only a couple of mines in the entire world where they can be mined, most of them are located in South Africa, India, and Australia.
Although blue is not the rarest color of a diamond, it can grow to cost much larger than their ‘more expensive’ colors. They even sell for more than most other diamond colors, even though they cost less per carat. And if you’re wondering how much more would set you back A 1-carat blue diamond could cost up to $200,000.
The most expensive blue diamond ever sold was $57.5 million for a 14.2-carat fancy diamond. The most expensive to exist however is worth an estimated $250 million for 45.2 carats. Quite impressive, isn’t it?
Red diamonds
Here we are then, the most expensive diamond color of them all: red diamonds are the best of the best when it comes most expensive colored diamonds. There are only 20 or 30 of them existing in the entire world.
The reason they get their beautiful red color is during their mining formation. This changes the crystal structure of the diamond, allowing light to pass through it at a different rate. The process is so uncommon and so rare that red diamonds are extremely small. You would be lucky to come across a red diamond larger than a single carat in size.
Thanks to this, red diamonds are the most expensive diamond per carat of all colored diamonds. On average they will set you back over $1,000,000 per carat. And since you’re surely wanting to know: the largest red diamond ever sold was bought for $8,000,000, weighing only 5.11 carats, do you think it’s a price worth paying?
In fact, red diamonds are so expensive and so rare that even if red appears as a secondary color or modifier color on the diamond the price will skyrocket.
(Oh and by the way, if you’re curious about the prices ,you can check out the most expensive diamonds in the world right here: https://www.naturallycolored.com/famous-diamonds/most-expensive-diamonds).
Conclusion
In conclusion, then, the reason diamonds are so expensive is thanks to supply and demand, color diamonds are so rare (as I said, they make up only 0.1% of the whole diamond supply), this means that since more people want the diamonds the price will increase.
Colored diamonds are beautiful and like we have examined today, they get their color through the chemical process is during the mining stage. These phenomena are so rare, which gives colored diamonds their rare prestige.
But to answer your question, ‘which color diamond is the most expensive?’ the answer is simple: red colored diamonds are the most expensive there followed by blue diamonds, pink diamonds and then yellow diamonds.
But don’t confuse rarity with expense, some diamonds are so rare they can only be sold in small quantities, which leads to a smaller price paid overall for the diamond. For example, many pink diamonds will cost an awful lot more than red diamonds yet red diamonds are much, much more expensive per carat.
What do you think is it a price worth paying? Thank you so much for reading!
