Violet may contain a tinge of blue or gray, the average colour of the violet flower. Violet occurs in the spectrum between ultra violet and blue and is considered a colour on its own. The violet colour diamond is distinctly different from the adjacent hues blue and purple.

What is called violet and purple are extremely rare. Violets coloured diamonds from the Argyle mine actually look more grayish blue, and thought to be related to hydrogen.

There continues to be much discussion about the differences between violet and purple coloured diamonds. There are so few of these coloured diamonds discovered thus far that it is difficult to evaluate and compare. Violet diamonds tend toward blue and purple diamonds tend toward red or pink. It's no accident that the most famous limerick in English begins, "Roses are red, violets are blue." There is also good sound science that would add, "Lilacs are purple."

Most of the grading reposts describe violet stones as combinations of gray and blue. Yet somehow the colour that you see adds up to violet. You would never mistake this colour for purple, which usually has pink in it.

The fuss over violet and purple diamonds is recent as far as controversies go. Collectors of fancy colour diamonds could only dream of owning these colours until the discovery of violet diamonds in Australia in the 1980's, and a fluke find of purples in Russia a decade later. Yet even then, scientists doubted their eyes.

Violet diamonds are the ultimate obscurity in that they are so rare even the few who know about them hardly expect to ever see them.