Ruby Or Garnet How To Tell

If the light reflects a rainbow of colors including bands of yellow and green the odds are you are looking at a garnet.

Ruby or garnet how to tell. Even though garnet is also a gemstone it is a semiprecious gemstone with a significantly low value compared to ruby. View the garnet in both natural and artificial light. Rubies red corundums that contains aluminum oxide and chromium generally are more valuable than red garnets so it is important to be able to tell the difference between them when buying gemstones. If you are mistaking a ruby for a red garnet this is an easy way to distinguish between the two as rubies will not display green or yellow bands.

If it is a real ruby however know that darker stones are usually worth more than lighter stones. They are light but not bright if the gem is more of a dark red then it may be garnet instead of a ruby. Garnets can be be found in a variety of colors. Fake gems are often dull.

If you are holding a ruby the rainbow image you see will be blurred and appear almost as one rainbow on top of another. Ruby is one of the four most precious stones in the world along with diamond sapphires and emerald. A real garnets will change colors in both lights. The rainbow image you see within a garnet will be much more clear due to its singly refractive property.

Tell by the color and the shine. To do this hold your stone up to a bright light source and move it around until the stone creates a rainbow. Starting with their toughness a garnet has only been given 6 5 to 7 5 on the mohs scale while a ruby has been given a solid 9 0. This is because a ruby s makeup is such that it absorbs yellow and green and will not reflect them in that.

In terms of their colors while a garnet has a wide variety of colors other than red such as green brown and orange a ruby is usually red. Garnets are a 7 7 5 on the mohs scale. Real rubies glow with a deep vivid almost stoplight red. Since the most common color of garnet is red it is important to know how to spot the difference of ruby and garnet.

A ruby is a doubly refractive stone so it refracts light in a much different way than a garnet which is singly refractive. Now look at the rainbow or spectrum and if there are yellow and green bands then your stone is likely not a ruby. Perform a hardness test. This simply means that a ruby is a more durable mineral than the garnet.