Sapphires: Beautiful Beyond Blue
 

Sapphire is often considered to be synonymous with the color blue: you can easily picture sapphire seas. However, sapphire is beautiful beyond blue, in every color but red, because red is called ruby.  The other colors of sapphire can be just as beautiful and rare - or even rarer - than the blue but they are usually priced less. Yellow, orange, lavender, and other pastel shades are especially affordable.
 

Other very popular shades of fancy sapphires are yellows, bright oranges, lavender and purples, and a bluish green color.
 

Generally, the more clear and vivid the color, the more valuable the fancy sapphire. If the color is in the pastel range, the clarity should be good: because in lighter tones inclusions are more noticeable, the trade usually prefers the gemstones to be cleaner with fewer visible inclusions. In a lighter colored gemstone, the cut is also more important: it should reflect light back evenly across the face of the stone, making it lively and brilliant. With darker more intense colors, the cut is not as critical because the color creates its own impact.

No matter the color of the sapphire the have a hardness of 9 on Moh's hardness scale.