What is Color Saturation and its Relationship with Tanzanite Rarity

Tanzanite is one of the world’s most popular gemstones and its vivid colors are the reason behind its ever-increasing value. The qualities that drive up the worth of Tanzanite include its vivid blue color. Tanzanite ought to be exceptionally sparkling and look imperial blue, not the pale or grayish shading. While assessing the color of gemstones, remember it is evaluated by three factors: tone, saturation, and hue. Tone means how light or dark the stone shows up, while saturation refers to how profound or distinctive the shading is. On the other hand, Hue means the overall body shade of the gemstone. The most important factor among them is Saturation as it defines the intensity of color in a gemstone. As the saturation increases, the shade appears to be richer. As the saturation decreases, the colors appear to be more washed-out or light. A highly saturated stone has vivid, dark and brilliant colors, while stone with a low saturation will be less appealing with pale or light colors.

The color that gemologists recommend in Tanzanite is the deep royal blue. Before a Tanzanite crystal is faceted, a professional gem cutter studies the gem and chooses the best orientation, which will show the perfect shade. Most cutters try to produce a pure blue Tanzanite. Shockingly, enhancing the blue color of the stone sacrifices a great deal of weight, which results in smaller and expensive gems. However, the after result of the stone justifies the sacrifice. Stone ranges more than 4 carats or bigger have been known to show the strongest blue tone.

What is Gemstone Color Saturation?

As we have mentioned above, saturation defines the intensity of color ranging from light, to rich to vivid. In general, the more rich the color, the rarer the gemstone is. In specialized terms, color saturation is the expression of the transmission of light from a source. The term hue refers to the shade of the gemstone, while saturation portrays the intensity (purity) of that tint. Many rough gems can display either a brownish or grayish tinge to their shading. It’s not always easily noticeable, yet it tends to be there, particularly on diamonds with low saturation.

All Sapphires that are not distinctive in saturation will have a hint of grey. On the off chance that a gemstone was natural grey or brown, it would be depicted as having zero color saturation. The higher the saturation in a gemstone, the more significant it becomes. Sometimes, saturation is considerably more significant than the actual shade. For instance, a violetish blue Sapphire with a distinctive saturation would undoubtedly cost in excess of a pure blue Sapphire which had a grayish cover.

How Color Saturation determines Tanzanite’s Rarity?

Saturation is fundamentally the richness of color in a stone, basically the level to which color "fills" the stone. The more saturated a color in Tanzanite, the more valuable it is. This isn't simply because people gravitate towards the more distinctive colors yet additionally they occur significantly more once in a while naturally. Indeed, in the extremely best 1% grades, very few carats are mined a year.

As the color saturation decreases, the stones lose the richness of color and the grade drops. Miners used to utilize the term AAA to depict these pure and natural pieces, but this term appears to have lost its importance as internet will show you an enormous amount of dealers all calling their product AAA, AAAA or adding a bounty of plus (+) marks to them to make them more attractive despite the fact that the shading is obviously not even close to the best grades. In fact, these top colors are exceptionally rare and don't occurs in huge quantities. Most merchants are selling stones in the B, A or AA grades and spike the pictures to improve the appearance.

What Causes Tanzanite's Color?

The blue color of tanzanite is caused by limited quantities of vanadium inside the zoisite mineral composition. At the point when vanadium-bearing zoisite is heated to a temperature of 600 degrees Celsius for around 30 minutes, the oxidation condition of the vanadium changes, which causes or enhances the blue color of Tanzanite.

The heat treatment of tanzanite is exceptionally gentle when compared to other gemstones such as diamonds, rubies and sapphires as these gems can be heated to temperatures somewhere in the range of 1000 and 1800 degrees Celsius and can be held at those temperatures for quite a long time or weeks. Today, nearly all gems being sold as "tanzanite" have a blue color that has been caused or enhanced by heating. A small quantity of tanzanite in the market has a blue color that was produced naturally by the heat of metamorphism without any treatment in the laboratory. These natural blue, untreated tanzanites are the first choice of gemstone dealers, who search it out when making a purchase.

● Conclusion:

Tanzanite’s value, likewise other colored stones, is linked to its color to a greater extent. The most vivid and rich color of Tanzanite is likewise rare in nature. Remember that the best Tanzanites are mined very rarely and miners demand high for them as they know the worth of the couple of gems of this grade they mine every year. Approach your evaluation of color basically – Examine saturation and color levels.

Always inspect the areas where light reflects inside a stone and analyze it for its natural color instead of being dazed by dark areas caused by light extinction. A stone that is dark in view of excessively significant degrees of color isn't equivalent to a Tanzanite that is exceptionally saturated. In fact, you can get exceptionally dark looking Tanzanites with high tone levels which have low color saturation. These are unquestionably not top grade pieces. At the end, Tanzanite stones with a rich to striking blue, purplish blue and violetish blue color are the most significant. These rich tones can be most interesting to the people looking for tanzanite.