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Natural Fancy Colour Diamonds

A natural fancy colour diamond is a diamond whose colour is strong enough, or rare enough in hue, to be graded outside the D to Z scale, and whose colour owes nothing to treatment. Only a small share of gem diamonds qualify, and pure, saturated hues are rarer still. Byrex Gems, one of Canada's larger wholesalers of natural fancy colour diamonds, offers them to the trade from Toronto, many with GIA reports, each filmed unedited, with prices for approved buyers and viewings by appointment.

Where to buy natural fancy colour diamonds in Toronto

Byrex Gems lists 914 natural fancy colour diamonds online today. 903 of them come with a report from laboratories including GIA, Argyle, HRD and AIG. Viewings are at our Toronto office, 27 Queen Street East, Suite 407, steps from Queen subway station, by appointment. We have supplied coloured gemstones and natural fancy colour diamonds to jewellers and designers since 1988, and welcome private clients by appointment. Prices are shown to approved trade accounts; private clients can ask us on WhatsApp, where we reply within 12 hours, or by email within 24 hours. Every stone ships insured, worldwide.

What is a natural fancy colour diamond?

Most diamonds are graded for the absence of colour on the D to Z scale. A fancy colour diamond is graded for the presence of colour instead. Yellow and brown enter the fancy range once they are stronger than Z; every other hue, from pink and blue to green, orange, purple and grey, is a fancy colour at any strength.

Each hue has its own cause. Nitrogen in the crystal lattice makes yellow. Boron makes blue. Pink, red and most brown come from plastic deformation, a distortion of the lattice while the crystal was deep in the earth. Green comes from natural radiation that reached the stone over geological time. Grey and violet are associated with hydrogen, and some grey with boron.

Sources follow the hues. The Argyle mine in Western Australia produced most of the world's pink and much of its brown. The Cullinan mine in South Africa, once called Premier, is the main source of blue. Zimmi in Sierra Leone is known for intense yellow. Brazil, Venezuela and central Africa yield most green. Canada's Northwest Territories mines have produced fancy yellows in small numbers.

How GIA grades fancy colour diamonds

GIA describes fancy colour in three parts: hue, tone and saturation. Hue is the colour itself, chosen from 27 hue names. Tone is how light or dark it is. Saturation is how strong or weak it is. The grade is the combination of tone and saturation, on a scale that runs Faint, Very Light, Light, Fancy Light, Fancy, Fancy Intense, Fancy Vivid, Fancy Deep and Fancy Dark. For yellow and brown the scale begins at Fancy Light, because the lighter steps are already covered by the D to Z grades.

Modifiers describe a second hue. In a GIA colour description the last hue named is the dominant one: a purplish pink is a pink with a touch of purple, a pink-purple is a purple with a strong pink component. A grade with a single hue and no modifier is often called pure in the trade.

The report also states colour origin. Natural means the colour formed in the earth; treated colour is identified and must be disclosed at every sale. Trade terms such as canary, champagne, cognac and pumpkin are not lab grades; they are sales language that sits beside the report wording, never in place of it.

What dealers and jewellers check before buying

Start with the report. Confirm the report number on the laboratory's online verification service, check that the laser inscription on the girdle matches, and read the colour origin line. For green and some pink diamonds, laboratories occasionally state that origin could not be determined; a buyer should know that before committing.

Then judge the colour as it will arrive. Fancy colour diamonds are graded viewed from the top, so a video or examination from above tells the truth about evenness, the modifier and how much colour the cut returns. Two stones with the same grade can look different, which is why Byrex films every stone unedited in its office.

Cut and shape matter more than in colourless diamonds. Radiant, cushion and other mixed cuts hold and deepen colour; round brilliants often lose it. Clarity is secondary to colour but still affects durability and price, and fluorescence should be noted. For earrings and multi-stone work, pairs and close matches are checked for hue, modifier, tone, shape and size together, and a slight mismatch in tone shows more than a difference in carat weight. Finally, consider the metal: yellow gold flatters yellow and brown, rose gold supports pink, and white metal lets blue and grey read cleanly.

What drives the value of a fancy colour diamond

Colour comes first. Within a hue, value rises with saturation, so Fancy Intense and Fancy Vivid grades command the most interest. Purity of hue follows: a pure pink or pure blue is worth more than the same stone with a brownish or greyish modifier, while some modifiers, such as purplish in pink or orangy in yellow, are welcomed rather than penalised.

Hue itself sets the broad hierarchy. Red, blue, pink, green and pure orange sit at the top because so few exist. Yellow is the most available fancy colour, and brown the most common of all, so within those hues the market is more selective about saturation and purity.

Size counts, but unevenly. Fine colour in a large stone is exponentially scarcer than in a small one, so value climbs in steps at the weights buyers search for rather than in a straight line. Clarity, cut quality and the absence of strong fluorescence refine the price within a colour grade, and a documented provenance, such as an Argyle lot number, adds a premium that has grown since that mine closed. Byrex shows full trade prices to approved accounts and never publishes them.

Supply, the Argyle closure and famous stones

The supply picture changed in November 2020 when Rio Tinto closed the Argyle mine after 37 years of production. Argyle had supplied most of the world's pink, red and violet diamonds and a large share of its champagne and cognac browns. No new source has replaced it, and the pinks still circulating are the ones already cut and certified. Blue continues to come in small numbers from Cullinan, yellow from Sierra Leone, South Africa and Canada, and green from South America and Africa, all in quantities that keep the category scarce.

The famous stones show the range. The Hope Diamond, graded by GIA as Fancy Deep grayish blue, has been in the Smithsonian since 1958. The Tiffany Yellow was found in the Kimberley mines of South Africa in the 1870s. The Dresden Green, kept in Dresden's Green Vault for centuries, is the best known natural green. The Pink Star is the largest Fancy Vivid pink graded by GIA, and the Graff Pink and the Winston Pink Legacy set auction benchmarks for pink in 2010 and 2018. The Golden Jubilee, a brown from the Premier mine, is the largest faceted diamond in the world. Each hue has its own page on this site.

Buying fancy colour diamonds from Byrex Gems

Byrex Gems has served the jewellery trade from Toronto since 1988, and more than seven thousand jewellers, designers and dealers have bought from us in that time, some of them for decades. Many of our fancy colour diamonds carry reports from GIA and other leading laboratories, and every stone is filmed in our office, unedited, so what you see is what arrives.

Approved trade buyers see prices online. A message on WhatsApp at +1 (437) 450-3786 is answered within hours; an email to info@byrex.com, the same day, seven days a week. What is listed is a part of what we hold: more colours, grades and matched pairs are kept in the vault, and what we do not hold ourselves we can source through our offices worldwide. Private viewings are arranged by appointment in Toronto, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Dubai.

Natural Fancy Colour Diamonds: questions buyers ask

Where can I buy natural fancy colour diamonds in Toronto?

What makes a diamond a fancy colour diamond?

A diamond is a fancy colour diamond when its colour is graded for presence rather than absence. Yellow and brown qualify once stronger than Z on the GIA scale; pink, blue, green, orange, purple, grey and red qualify at any strength.

Which colours does Byrex Gems keep in stock?

Byrex keeps natural pink, yellow, blue, green, orange, champagne and cognac brown, grey and chameleon diamonds, with pairs and close matches in the more available hues. Stones not shown can be sourced through our offices and contacts worldwide.

Are fancy colour diamonds treated to improve colour?

Natural fancy colour diamonds are not. Some diamonds are irradiated, annealed or HPHT-treated to create or change colour, and any treatment must be disclosed. The colour origin line on a GIA report states whether the colour is natural.

Does every Byrex fancy colour diamond have a GIA report?

Most do. GIA reports accompany the majority of our fancy colour diamonds, and the report wording is quoted on each stone page. A few smaller stones carry reports from other recognised laboratories, which is stated clearly.

Does Byrex sell fancy colour diamonds to private clients?

Yes. Byrex is a wholesaler and sells first to jewellers, designers and dealers, but private clients are welcome by appointment at 27 Queen Street East in Toronto, where stones can be seen in person before any decision.

Why are prices not shown on the page?

Byrex sells at trade prices, which are shown only to approved trade buyers who sign in. This keeps pricing consistent for the jewellers who resell our stones. Private clients receive pricing through their appointment.

Can I view fancy colour diamonds in Toronto?

Yes. Viewings take place by appointment at our office at 27 Queen Street East, Suite 407, Toronto. Stones can be compared under daylight-equivalent lighting and alongside the videos shown on the site.

What is the difference between Fancy Intense and Fancy Vivid?

Both are strong colour grades on GIA's scale. Fancy Vivid is the stronger: it describes the highest saturation with a tone that keeps the colour bright, while Fancy Intense sits one step below it in strength.

Byrex Gems, 27 Queen Street East, Suite 407, Toronto. Coloured gemstones and natural fancy colour diamonds for the trade since 1988, and for private clients by appointment.

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