About Fancy Natural Orange Diamonds

Fancy orange diamonds are a class of their own even within the exclusive category of natural fancy colored diamonds. A natural orange diamond is an extremely rare find, which leaves collectors scrambling to get their hands on these gorgeous specimens.

Some collectors will even settle for enhanced orange diamonds, being that they are so hard to come by. When it comes to orange diamonds with secondary hues, they are more commonly available and therefore much less valuable, but can be just as beautiful.

Location

Orange diamonds are typically mined in South Africa and different regions in Australia.

Cause of Color

A combination of nitrogen and molecular deformities are believed to be the cause of the spectacular coloring, but too few true orange diamonds have ever been examined to know for certain. Fancy orange diamonds are graded by their intensity, going from Faint and Very Light Orange, to Fancy Vivid and Fancy Deep Orange, with the latter two obviously being the most desirable.

Although true orange is the rarest and most valuable, there are many orange stones with secondary colors such as yellow and brown that are quite stunning and would make beautiful additions to any diamond collection or piece of jewelry.

Famous Orange Diamonds

Until 2013, the unrivaled king of the fancy orange diamond world was the Pumpkin Diamond, discovered in a South African mine in 1997. The 5.54 cushion cut, fancy vivid orange diamond gained instant fame as the largest fancy orange diamond in the world. Halle Berry wore the Pumpkin diamond to the 2002 Oscars, set in a gorgeous white gold ring, flanked by a colorless diamond on either side.

In 2013 a fancy orange diamond came around to join the Pumpkin Diamond in its place of honor. Known simply as The Orange, this diamond shattered fancy colored diamond price records when it was auctioned in November 2013 at Christie’s for a shocking $35.5 million. This pear shaped, 14.82-carat fancy vivid orange diamond weighs approximately three times as much as the Pumpkin Diamond. When it was sold for about $2.4 million per carat, it set a record for the most expensive stone sold per carat, which isn't so surprising when you consider that all other fancy orange diamonds sold at an auction weighed less than 6 carats! It is by far the largest pure orange diamond known to exist.