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Daniella Shaw

Diamond Treatment, Synthetics & Stimulants: Here’s What You Need To Know

Updated: Apr 8, 2022



So, now that you’ve covered the information in the 4 Things To Consider When Purchasing A Diamond, let’s get into some additional diamond information that might help you to broaden your understanding around diamond grading for when you make the decision to purchase.


Diamond Treatments, Synthetics and Simulants


In recent years, diamond treatments, simulated diamonds, and laboratory-grown or synthetic diamonds have become more common, more advanced, and harder to detect.


While treatments can change a stone's color or apparent clarity, the presence of such treatments may affect the diamond's value - particularly if the price reflects its appearance after treatment. A Grading Report provides buyers with the ultimate assurance that they're getting exactly what they pay for.


Diamond Treatments


  • COLOR ENHANCEMENTS: Coating enhances a diamond's color by masking an undesirable body color with an ultra-thin layer of chemicals or plastics.


  • HPIIT (high-pressure, high-temperature) process is an effective tool for changing the color of certain diamonds, making them colorless, pink, blue, green, yellowish green, or yellow, Outside of a well-equipped grading laboratory, this form of treatment is virtually undetectable.


  • CLARITY ENHANCEMENTS: Laser drilling is commonly used to remove small dark inclusions, The laser bores a small hole into the diamond's interior and burns away the inclusion, or creates a channel through which a bleaching agent can be introduced to improve the inclusion's appearance.


  • Fracture fitting hides white fractures in a diamond called "feathers: A glasslike substance is injected into the fracture to make it less visible and to improve the stone's apparent clarity, Good fracture filling is very subtle, and so examination by a skilled diamond grader is necessary to detect its presence in a stone.


Synthetic Diamonds


A synthetic diamond is man-made, the result of a technological process, as opposed to the geological process that creates natural diamonds.


Synthetic diamonds have essentially the same chemical composition, crystal structure, optical, and physical properties of diamonds found in nature.


Most synthetic diamonds are categorized as either HPHT (high-pressure, high-temperature) or CVD (chemical vapor deposition) diamonds, depending on the method of their production, Since HPHT and CVD diamonds are virtually identical to natural diamonds, differences only become clear when they are viewed by a trained grader in a gem laboratory.



Diamond Simulants


The appearance of diamond simulants are similar to that of natural diamonds, but stimulants are not diamond. Common diamond simulants include glass and cubic Zirconia (CZ), both of which are completely unrelated to a diamond at the simulant's atomic level.




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