Many of the “normal” diamonds in the world actually have traces of yellow or brown colour. Usually this is unwelcome and results in the stone getting a poor colour grading. However if the yellow colour is sufficiently strong it can become highly desirable.
Yellow diamonds are usually produced as a result of traces of nitrogen in the stone. This can lead to a variety of yellow hues with vivid canary yellow being the most impressive, rarest and most valuable. As well as Canary other fancy yellow shades go by names such as marmalade, amber and marigold. However Canary remains the most well known yellow diamond hue and these stones are often just called Canaries. Sometimes the term Cape series is also used, this having been coined by in the 1940s following spectroscopic analysis of yellow diamonds from South Africa.
Famous yellow diamonds include the Kimberley Octahedron and Tiffany Diamond. The Tiffany appeared in the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s mounted in a necklace of white diamonds. This is a popular display style for yellow diamonds; placing them side by side with plain white diamonds of high grade colour and clarity really shows off the yellow of the fancy gem.
Modern celebrities associated with yellow diamonds include Hillary Clinton, Whoopi Goldberg and Christy Turlington.
The price of natural vivid yellow diamonds puts them beyond the reach of most of us. However there are various processes for artificially creating a synthetic yellow colour in white diamonds or enhancing any colour already there. It’s also possible to buy man made, lab created fancy colour diamonds at a fraction of the price of the natural variety.