Clarity and Color Enhanced Diamonds Tutorial 

Clarity Enhancement

Clarity enhancement is a process where a diamonds apparent clarity has been improved from its natural clarity to one of a more desirable quality. Only the diamond's clarity has been improved, leaving the diamond's natural color completely undisturbed.

There are two common types of clarity enhancement, the first being "fracture filling" when a feather inclusion that reaches the surface of the stone is filled with a resin material making the inclusion more opaque and less visible to the eye. This process does not add any weight to the diamond and is very durable. Usually such diamonds come with the lifetime warranty.

The second type of enhancement is known as "laser drilling" where a tiny laser hole is drilled to reach a totally enclosed dark inclusion and a process of "bleaching" the color out is done. The drilled hole is thinner than a human hair and is hardly visible to the naked eye and after the color is taken out what is left is a much cleaner looking diamond.

Color Enhancement

There are many methods of enhancing the original color of a diamond. Outlined here are two of the more commonly used procedures. The first is irradiation where a fancy color is added to a diamond to make it more appealing to consumers who are looking for diamonds of this type. A linear particle accelerator is used to bombard the diamond with electrons then the diamond is heated to stabilizes the color. Common color results from this process are fancy blue, pink and yellow with deep even color. It is semi permanent and under certain conditions the color can be further altered.

The second type is High Pressure High Temperature or HPHT where a diamond with a brown or yellow color is reintroduced to near deep earth conditions using special machines improving the stones natural color to one that is more colorless. This process is permanent and in some cases can make tinted diamonds display a fancy color as well.