Sapphire and Ruby Color

Sapphire is a variety of corundum, like ruby. Although sapphire has always been associated with the color blue, sapphire is actually available in a full spectrum of colors, including pink, orange, yellow, green, purple, violet, gray, black, and brown, as well as colorless. In addition to the hue, most sapphire colors can be found in a variety of intensities, also known as saturation. Rubies are classified by their telltale saturated blood red color, but can also include those stones with a slight pink hue. Any corundum that does not qualify as ruby is considered sapphire. Not only does fancy sapphire exist in all the aforementioned colors and intermediate hues, there is even fancy sapphire that exhibits the phenomena known as color change. Most often color change sapphire appears purple under incandescent light and violet or blue under daylight or fluorescent lighting, but the phenomena can occur occasionally with other colors. Colorless sapphire used to be a popular diamond imitation, but there are now much better diamond simulant alternatives widely available to the public.