![]() Just like the contrast needed to maximize brilliance, a diamond must have contrast or scintillation overall to create blinking light and dark flashes as the stone moves back and forth. Scintillation is a little bit tricker to understand than fire or brilliance, but it consists of areas of light and shadow within a diamond that create contrast much like the chessboard example we described earlier. It’s not a very exact measurement, but it’s helpful in deciding whether a diamond has the desired amount of fire based on its cut! What is scintillation? A grade is then determined by the brightness and amount of flashes of color seen. To assess fire, graders in a lab often place a diamond under LED light and observe the stone from different angles. Red wavelengths are long and bend the least, whereas violet wavelengths are short and bend the most, and there are multiple other colors that bend at varying degrees to create a subtle, colorful show as you move your diamond around. ![]() That’s why, when you look at a diamond, you may notice small flashes of some colors but not others at different angles. These wavelengths of light come in many colors (red, green, violet, etc.) and they all bend at varying degrees, so the color we see when we look at a diamond is these wavelengths returning to our eyes. This process of breaking down is often called dispersion, where light separates into different colored wavelengths and moves independently.□ As light enters the diamond and hits the pavilion facets, it bends and shoots upward toward the crown facets, which causes the colorful wavelengths to disperse. This is a pretty fitting alternate name for the fire of a diamond given its properties! Unlike white brilliance, diamond fire is a colored sparkle that is the result of white light moving through the stone and breaking down into individual wavelengths. ![]() Both light and dark are necessary for maximum sparkle! What is fire?įire is almost the opposite of brilliance, and it’s also known as “ dispersion”. The white paper is dull and less lively compared to the chessboard, which offers equal amounts of light and dark for better contrast. For example, imagine a sheet of white paper and compare it to the checkered, black-and-white pattern of a chessboard. You can’t have one without the other, as the brightness of a diamond’s brilliance would fade into the background without that all-important contrast. ![]() ![]() There are two major facets of brilliance in diamonds: brightness and contrast.□ Brightness refers to how well the diamond returns light to the observer as it passes through the stone, and contrast means a healthy mix of light and dark areas that make that white sparkle pop. Facets and angles must act as perfectly clear windows to maximize brilliance, allowing light to bounce off and through them and back out the top of the diamond for our eyes to perceive it. Windows let light into a room, but a misshapen, fractured, or dirty window won’t be able to let as much light in as a clear pane of glass. So how exactly does diamond brilliance work? It may help to think of each facet and angle of a diamond as a window. This is brilliance: flashes of white sparkle that reflect back to the eye as light enters and then exits the diamond.□ A diamond with excellent brilliance will appear much whiter than a diamond that lacks proper brilliance, which will appear dull and dark as a result. When staring at a diamond, the first thing many people notice is the striking flashes of bright white light. We already mentioned that fire, brilliance, and scintillation are the essence of sparkle, but what do these terms even mean? And how do they come together to create that signature diamond sparkle we adore? Brilliance, fire, and scintillation all describe a different facet of sparkle, and we’ve broken each one down below: What is brilliance? ![]()
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