If you’re thinking of buying a beautiful piece of ruby jewelry, you need to look at the design of the piece and the stone itself. The three most important factors that rubies are judged on are hue, saturation and tone.The hue, or color, of a ruby is the firspeople notice about a stone. In fact, high-quality rubies are cut to maximize the quality of their color.
A vivid, intense red is the most desirable color. Rubies from the Mogok Valley in Burma, for example, are known for their intense “pigeon blood” color and are very valuable.
Variations in ruby jewelery color include red with jewelery to orange tones and red with blue to purple tones. Of course, a ruby is simply red corundum- any piece of corundum with a color other than red is called a ruby jewelery .
The saturation, or depth, of color jewelery is also very important. It is accepted that nearly all rubies jewelery available commercially have been treated in ssome way to improve their saturation. A process called surface diffusion, in which a bland-looking ruby is heated to a high temperature in the presence of coloring agents, is one of these treatments.
