• Origin : Sri Lanka

Normal heated sapphire pear cut royal blue

Sapphire Gemstone: Colors, Meanings, Prices & Benefits

Sapphire is a corundum gemstonebeloved for many reasons throughout history. Besides its beautiful colors, people have revered sapphires for their alleged spiritual powers and durability in industrial applications.

It’s difficult to separate sapphire from blue, despite the stone coming in a rainbow of other colors. In fact, the word “sapphire” described lapis lazuli and other blue gems until the Middle Ages. Today, “sapphire blue” is its own color outside the gem, seen in various arts.

What is the rarest color of sapphire? It’s not cut-and-dry, but most gemologists would say Kashmir blue or Padparadscha sapphires are rarest.

Don’t recognize those terms? Don’t worry! This guide will break down every sapphire gemstone color and variety, along with this legendary gem’s history, prices, and meanings.

About Sapphire Stone

Regardless of its color, sapphire is one of the four precious gemstones. The sapphire birthstone honors those born in September, though it was historically a birthstone for April. The stone is also a 5th, 45th, and 65th wedding anniversarygem. Astrologically, sapphires are Taurus zodiac stones.

Certain sapphire colors are important in Ayurvedic (or Hindu) astrology. In this practice, blue sapphire, called Neelam, is a Saturn star stone while yellow sapphire, or Pukhraj, is a Jupiter stone.

Sapphire is the official state gemstone of Montana, USA, and Queensland, Australia.

Outside of jewelry, sapphire has some important industrial applications, including:

• Watches

• Electronic wafers

• Semiconductor components

• LED substrates

• Extra durable windows (including ones used for infrared optics)

If you have a stainless steel or titanium model of the Apple Watch, it might contain sapphire glass!

One reason sapphires are industrially useful is their high ranking on the Mohs mineral hardness scale, one of the properties we’ll discuss next.

Sapphire Specifications & Characteristics

Sapphires are one of the two varieties of corundum, the other being ruby. Corundum minerals are composed of aluminum oxide.

Typically, sapphires form as flat-ended prismatic, barrel-shaped, or bipyramidal crystals.

Below, we’ve listed sapphire’s mineral properties.

(For specific sapphire color properties like pleochroism or luminescence colors, check out each sapphire color guide linked in the next section.)

• Mineral family: Corundum

• Mohs hardness: 9

• Color: All colors but red; Possible color-zoning

• Crystal structure: Hexagonal (trigonal)

• Luster: Vitreous (glassy) to sub-adamantine

• Transparency: Transparent to opaque

• Refractive index: 1.757-1.779

• Density: 3.99-4.10

• Cleavage: None

• Fracture: Conchoidal

• Streak: White

• Luminescence: Fluorescence present in all but black, green, and most blue sapphires (natural), varying degrees in all colors (synthetic); X-ray colors in some specimens from Sri Lanka, Kashmir, and Montana - dull red or yellow-orange

• Pleochroism: Present & very strong in most sapphire colors

• Birefringence: 0.008-0.009

• Dispersion: 0.018

• Optical effects: Asterism, chatoyancy, color-changing