The colours of jadeite jade are various. The most commonly known colour is green, followed by purple (or lavender), yellow, red and black. Majority of what’s inside most jadeite boulders is green and white. The white parts sometimes are pure white or they can be greyish, brownish or blueish, whereas there are many shades of green in jadeite.
Apart from white, there is usually only one colour inside a jadeite rough stone, but some rare stones could have two or even three colours. There is also colourless jadeite that has no colour like an ice which is called “icy type”jadeite. Some of the colourless jadeite has ultra-high transparency and clear texture which gives off the illusion that it looks like glass and people would call them “glassy type”. In general, nice green jadeite with high translucency and fine texture is rarer than colourless icy or glassy jadeite. If both stones are of high translucency, the green stone would cost more than a colourless stone.
Although green is the most common jadeite colour in the market, top “imperial green”jadeites always sell for the highest price. If there are two green jadeites, both in identical size. One being the most common light apple green, and the other being the most intense “imperial green” jadeite. The prices between the two could at most differ by ten thousand times. The colour is the key element that can affect the price of jadeite the most. Colours that are not as pure green (greyish, bluish green etc) will significantly decrease the price of the jadeite. Of course, there are other aspects aside from colour (i.e. texture, transparency, inclusion, shape etc.) and people who know how to appreciate jadeite understand these aspects well. Only jadeites with the best of all five aspects are considered truely high-quality pieces.
