How to observe the true colour of your sapphire

The greatest myth of the sapphire colours

Many gemstone varieties have a single hue or a very narrow colour range. Therefore people expect all the blue sapphires to be the same blue or closely resemble their colours. Same for the pink and yellow sapphires. Sapphires have a continuous spectrum of colours.

As far as the colours of the sapphires can be distinguishingly identifiable as a pure colour such as a blue or yellow it is fine. But as we cross the boundaries towards red to pink, pink to purple, blue to violet, or yellow to orange, we may confuse whether to call it either. 

_{pink or purple is largely depending on the person who is observing}

Don't get surprised! Pink is not a colour

There is a great scientific debate about the pink colour. The following Youtube video can give you an answer to the question of why your pink is not my pink. There is no wavelength of light associated with pink. Pink or magenta is a non-spectral colour. Unlike any other colour, it is a made-up colour in our brains.

Different people identify the same colour either pink or purple. This may also largely depends on how they are trained their brain to associate names with colours from the very beginning of life. 

_{under low colour temperatures, some pink sapphires can appear purple}

You could observe different colours in sapphires in different lighting conditions based on the colour temperature

The same sapphire gemstone viewed in different lighting conditions will display slightly different colours. When we observe a sapphire in a yellow artificial light indoors blue sapphires can get a slightly violet tint and pink sapphires can get a slightly purplish tint. When this change is significant, they are called colour changing sapphires.

_{When the Yellow light is on the blue sapphire turns slightly purplish and when it off turns blue again}

Transparency and opaque sapphires

Sapphires can be transparent, translucent, or opaque. Darker colour tints or inclusions can make a sapphire translucent. A special variety of blue sapphires called 'Kaka Nil' (meaning 'Raven Black') are almost opaque. Royal blue sapphire with dark blue hues can appear very translucent in indoor lighting conditions but when observed in a medium bright daylight such as next to a window, they can showcase very lustrous deep blue. Medium cornflower blue sapphires have the overall best performance where the gemstone is transparent and glitters with a decent colour intensity in every lighting condition.