• Which treatments are applied?
  • How can you recognise these treatments?
  • Why shouldn’t you buy treated diamonds?

Did you know there are techniques for manipulating the colour and purity of a diamond? These ‘improvement techniques’ are referred to as ‘diamond enhancements’ and serve to upgrade the stones. This allows you to buy diamonds which look fantastic, but they will still be of a lower quality.  

Which treatments are applied?

One of the first techniques used is laser drilling, for the removal of inclusions. This technique involves drilling a microscopic hole up to the black carbon remnants, after which the diamond is placed in an acid which eats away the inclusions. This allows you to buy diamonds which look clearer. Filling up small tears or breaks in the diamond, in order to make it look better optically, is another technique used to upgrade the stone.

A third technique is heating up the diamonds to make them whiter. This technique is also used to give naturally coloured diamonds a livelier colour.

How can you recognise these treatments?

Only a well trained eye will be able to recognise these diamond enhancements. Although we would certainly recommend having a very good look at the stones yourself when you decide to buy diamonds. The drill holes resulting from the laser drilling can sometimes be seen with the naked eye. However, the filling used to fade these holes or certain tears are difficult to see. You need to see how the light hits the diamond in order to determine this. Can you see purple-blue or green reflections when the light hits the diamond in a certain way?

This so-called flash effect indicates the use of fillings. So always take your time to take a good look at the diamond yourself. Take a look at the certificate too! If this includes the term ‘CE’ (Clarity Enhanced), you will know the diamond has been treated.

Why shouldn’t you buy treated diamonds?

As previously indicated, treated diamonds are optically upgraded, but their quality will remain significantly lower. That’s why you can buy these diamonds at a cost which is an average of 30 to 50% lower than non-treated diamonds with the same clarity or colour. Do you think this is a good opportunity to buy larger diamonds with a smaller budget? There are other tricks for making a quality diamond appear bigger optically

In addition, treated diamonds can burst or break when they come into contact with fire, corrosive substances or other adverse influences. That’s why you’ll only be able to buy natural, untreated diamonds from BAUNAT.

Take a look at our extensive collection of top quality diamond jewellery for unbeatable prices here or contact our diamond experts for extra advice and information.

Share on: