What Is My Birthstone?

Garnet is not a single mineral — it is a group of chemically related silicate minerals that share the same crystal structure but differ in composition. This is why garnet exists in colors beyond its most recognizable deep red: demantoid garnet is green, spessartite is orange, and rhodolite spans pink to purple-red. The red variety (pyrope and almandine garnet) is the birthstone most people picture, and its color comes from iron and manganese in its crystal structure.

Garnet's color in a ring is distinctive because of how it handles light. The deep red has warmth and depth — it absorbs the blue and green portions of the visible spectrum and reflects red and orange, which means it glows rather than sparkles in incandescent light. This makes garnet particularly beautiful in candlelight or warm artificial lighting, and somewhat less vivid in cool daylight.

At Mohs 6.5–7.5 (the range varies by garnet species), garnet is a practical choice for rings worn with awareness. It is harder than most household abrasives but softer than quartz dust, which is present in ambient air. A garnet ring worn daily will develop surface micro-scratches over years of wear, which affects luster rather than structural integrity. A bezel or protective prong setting preserves the stone's edge quality better than a fully exposed table setting over long-term use.

In jewelry: Garnet pairs naturally with yellow and rose gold, which amplify its warmth. In white gold or silver, the contrast is starker and more architectural. Garnet's durability and deep color also make it one of the strongest choices for alternative engagement rings among the softer birthstones. Browse: birthstone jewelry.

Amethyst is quartz — specifically, quartz colored purple by iron impurities and natural irradiation within the crystal structure. The purple color ranges from a pale, almost silvery lilac to a deep, saturated violet that approaches the color of dark plums. The most valued amethyst has a strong, even purple with no visible color zoning — though color zoning (the uneven distribution of purple within the stone) is common in natural amethyst and creates interesting visual texture in step-cut stones.

The name comes from the ancient Greek word amethystos — meaning "not intoxicated" — reflecting a belief that amethyst protected its wearer from the effects of alcohol. Medieval European clergy wore amethyst as a symbol of piety, and it appears extensively in royal and ecclesiastical jewelry collections. Before the discovery of large deposits in Brazil in the 18th century, amethyst was considered as precious as ruby or sapphire and was reserved for royal and high-church use.

At Mohs 7, amethyst is a practical daily wear stone. It is harder than most metals and softer than sapphire or diamond, which means it will resist casual scratching but should be stored separately from harder stones to avoid being scratched itself. Amethyst can fade with prolonged UV exposure — direct sustained sunlight will gradually lighten the stone's color, particularly in paler specimens. Storing it away from direct light when not worn preserves its color long-term.

In jewelry: Amethyst's purple-to-violet range creates striking contrasts with both yellow gold (warm against cool) and white gold (clean modern register). It pairs particularly well with aquamarine — the blue and purple are complementary colors that create visual harmony without competing. Browse: birthstone jewelry.

Aquamarine is a beryl variety — the same mineral family as emerald — colored by iron rather than chromium. Where chromium produces emerald's intense green, iron in aquamarine's crystal structure produces a pale to medium blue-green that is one of the most distinctive colors in the gemstone world. The name is Latin for "water of the sea," and the color earns it: aquamarine has a transparency and coolness that no other commonly available stone replicates.

Unlike emerald, which almost always contains inclusions, fine aquamarine is typically eye-clean — meaning inclusions are not visible to the naked eye. This transparency is part of what makes aquamarine's color so atmospheric: the stone is a window into its own interior rather than a colored surface. In emerald and scissor cuts, the transparency creates a quality of depth that is different from the surface reflection of a brilliant-cut stone.

At Mohs 7.5–8, aquamarine is a well-suited choice for daily wear in a ring. It is harder than most environmental abrasives and does not have the cleavage vulnerabilities that make some other stones (like topaz) more fragile than their hardness suggests. Aquamarine belongs to the same family as emerald and like emerald it has good toughness — meaning it resists chipping and breakage well relative to its hardness.

In jewelry: Aquamarine is Aquamarise's signature stone — its transparency, color range, and tonal depth inform the brand's entire aesthetic vocabulary. Browse the full collection: aquamarine engagement rings and the aquamarine gemstone guide.

Diamond is elemental carbon arranged in a specific crystal structure — the cubic (isometric) system — that produces the hardest natural material on earth and one of the highest refractive indices of any transparent stone. This refractive index (2.42) is what produces diamond's characteristic brilliance and fire: light entering the stone undergoes total internal reflection off the pavilion facets and exits through the table as dispersed white and spectral light.

The colorless diamond most associated with engagement rings and April birthstones is a specific variant — "white" or colorless diamond, graded on a scale from D (colorless) to Z (light yellow or brown) by the GIA. Fancy color diamonds — yellow, pink, blue, green, black — are chemically similar but get their color from different impurities or structural anomalies. Blue diamond gets its color from boron; yellow from nitrogen; pink from plastic deformation during crystal formation.

Diamond has one practical vulnerability that its hardness rating understates: cleavage. Diamond can cleave along specific crystallographic planes with moderate force in the right direction, even though it resists scratching from every other material. This is why jewelers are careful when setting diamonds, and why very thin diamond shapes (like extreme elongated cuts) can be more fragile than their hardness implies. Lab-grown diamonds are chemically and optically identical to mined diamonds — they rank equally at Mohs 10 and have the same optical properties.

In jewelry: April's birthstone is the most versatile in terms of metal pairing — colorless diamond suits every metal color equally. Browse: diamond engagement rings and lab-grown diamond rings.

Emerald is a chromium-bearing beryl — the same mineral family as aquamarine — and chromium is the element that produces its color. Where aquamarine's iron-derived color is pale and transparent, chromium in emerald produces a dense, saturated green with a warmth that no other green stone matches at the same intensity level. The specific green of a fine emerald — a rich, slightly bluish medium-to-deep green — is the standard against which all other green gemstones are measured.

Virtually all natural emeralds contain inclusions — fractures, mineral inclusions, and growth irregularities collectively called a jardin (French for garden). These are not defects; they are a geological record of the conditions under which the crystal formed, and gemologists use them to distinguish natural from synthetic stones and to identify geographic origin. An emerald with a visible jardin is normal; an emerald with no inclusions whatsoever is more likely lab-grown or a different stone entirely. The jardin is part of what makes each natural emerald unique.

Because of the jardin, emerald requires more attentive daily wear than its Mohs 7.5–8 rating suggests. The internal fractures that create the jardin also create pathways for mechanical stress — a sharp lateral impact can crack an emerald along an existing fracture plane even though the stone is technically hard enough to resist scratching. Bezel settings provide better protection than claw prongs because they distribute impact across the stone's perimeter rather than concentrating it at prong contact points.

In jewelry: Emerald pairs extraordinarily well with yellow gold — the warmth of the gold amplifies the warmth in the green, and the combination has appeared in fine jewelry since ancient Egypt. May birthstone collection: may birthstone jewelry and emerald engagement rings.

June has two primary birthstones with almost nothing in common mineralogically, which makes it the most interesting multi-stone month in the list. Pearl is not a mineral — it is an organic material produced by mollusks as a defense against irritants, composed of calcium carbonate (aragonite) in a crystalline form called nacre. Alexandrite is a chromium-bearing variety of chrysoberyl that produces one of the rarest optical phenomena in gemology: dramatic color change between daylight and incandescent light.

Pearl appears white or cream under normal conditions, but fine pearls have a quality called orient — a soft iridescence that appears to float just below the surface, caused by light interacting with the layered nacre structure. Pearls at Mohs 2.5–3 are among the softest materials used in fine jewelry and require the most careful wear of any birthstone: acids (including perspiration and perfume), sharp objects, and ultrasonic cleaners all damage nacre permanently. Pearls should be the last thing put on before going out and the first thing removed.

Alexandrite is one of the rarest gemstones in the world. Its chromium content creates an absorption window in the visible spectrum that straddles the border between green and red — in daylight (which is rich in blue-green wavelengths), the stone appears green; in incandescent light (richer in red wavelengths), it appears red-purple. Fine natural alexandrite with strong color change is rarer than fine ruby or sapphire. Lab-grown alexandrite replicates the color change effect at a fraction of the price and is the practical choice for most birthstone jewelry. Browse: birthstone jewelry.

Ruby is corundum — the same mineral as sapphire — colored red by chromium. The distinction between ruby and pink sapphire is definitional rather than mineralogical: both are chromium-bearing corundum, and the line between "strongly pink sapphire" and "pale ruby" is drawn differently by different grading labs and different countries' gemological conventions. GIA's position is that the red must be the dominant color for a stone to qualify as ruby rather than pink sapphire.

Fine ruby's red has a quality that distinguishes it from every other red gemstone: chromium produces a secondary fluorescence in ruby that causes the stone to glow slightly in daylight — the stone appears to generate its own light rather than simply reflecting it. This fluorescence is most pronounced in stones from Burma (now Myanmar), which are considered the benchmark for fine ruby quality. Thai and African rubies tend toward darker, more brownish reds; the Burmese "pigeon blood" red — pure red with a slight blue overtone and strong fluorescence — commands the highest prices in the market.

At Mohs 9 (second only to diamond), ruby is one of the most durable birthstones for daily wear in a ring. It does not have significant cleavage planes that would make it fragile despite its hardness, which means it performs well in settings that leave the stone exposed. This durability, combined with its visual impact, makes ruby one of the most appropriate birthstones for use in engagement rings by those born in July.

In jewelry: Ruby's red is the most saturated color available in a gemstone at Mohs 9 hardness. It pairs powerfully with both yellow gold (warm against warm) and white gold/platinum (the contrast heightens the red's intensity). Browse: birthstone jewelry.

Peridot is a magnesium iron silicate mineral (olivine) whose color is produced by iron — and unlike most gemstones where iron produces different colors depending on its oxidation state, peridot's green is inherent to its chemical composition and cannot be removed or altered. All peridot is green; the range spans from a pale yellow-green to a rich, slightly brownish olive green. The most valued peridot has a vivid lime-to-grass green without brown overtones, found most notably in deposits in Pakistan's Kohistan region.

Peridot has one notable quality relevant to setting choice: it can be brittle along certain stress directions despite its Mohs 6.5–7 rating. It is also sensitive to rapid temperature change — thermal shock can crack peridot. These factors make bezel or protective prong settings more appropriate than open claw settings for daily wear rings. Peridot is also among the few gemstones that form in the earth's mantle rather than the crust — some peridot has extraterrestrial origin, found in meteorites (pallasites).

Spinel was added as August's alternate birthstone in 2016 and is a dramatically different stone. Spinel (magnesium aluminum oxide) occurs in vivid reds, pinks, oranges, and purples, and at Mohs 8 is harder and tougher than peridot. For centuries, the most famous "rubies" in royal jewelry collections — including the Black Prince's Ruby in the British Imperial State Crown — were actually red spinels. The confusion is understandable: fine red spinel can equal fine ruby in color intensity, and spinel fluoresces similarly. It is now prized in its own right as a collector's stone.

In jewelry: Peridot's yellow-green suits yellow gold for a warm, historical pairing. Red or hot-pink spinel in white gold or platinum creates striking contemporary jewelry. Browse: birthstone jewelry.

Sapphire is corundum that is any color other than red — red corundum is ruby by definition. The most familiar sapphire is blue, and blue sapphire is what almost everyone pictures when they hear the word. Blue sapphire gets its color from iron and titanium in the crystal structure — the specific pairing of these two elements produces a rich blue that varies from a pale, almost lavender-blue to a deep velvety navy. The most valued blue sapphires (traditionally from Kashmir, now rare; also from Burma and Sri Lanka) have a vivid, slightly violet-tinged blue that has been described as "cornflower" at the lighter end and "royal blue" at the deeper.

Sapphire also exists in yellow, pink, orange (padparadscha — a rare and highly valued pinkish-orange), green, teal, purple, and colorless varieties. Teal sapphire — a blue-green that sits at the boundary between blue and green — has become particularly significant in alternative engagement ring design because its unusual color has no natural comparison point. Parti sapphire, which shows color zoning between blue, green, and sometimes yellow within a single stone, is similarly distinctive and has moved from a curiosity to a design feature in contemporary fine jewelry.

At Mohs 9, sapphire is the second hardest natural gemstone after diamond and is the most practical choice among the highly colored birthstones for daily wear in a ring. It lacks significant cleavage planes and has excellent toughness. Sapphire is appropriate for any setting style, including open claw and elevated prong settings that would require more caution with softer stones.

In jewelry: Sapphire is Aquamarise's most frequently used colored stone alongside aquamarine. Browse: sapphire engagement rings. For the full guide to September's birthstone: birthstone jewelry.

Opal's play-of-color — the shifting spectral iridescence that makes the stone appear to contain fire, sky, and water simultaneously — is produced by the diffraction of light through silica spheres arranged in a regular pattern within the stone's structure. The colors visible in any given opal depend on the diameter and arrangement of these spheres: larger spheres diffract longer wavelengths (red and orange); smaller spheres diffract shorter wavelengths (blue and violet). An opal that shows all spectral colors has sphere layers of varying size, and the pattern in which those colors appear — pinfire (tiny flecks), harlequin (large patches), rolling flash (sweeping color sheets) — depends on the spheres' spatial arrangement.

At Mohs 5.5–6.5, opal is the softest commonly used birthstone for rings and requires the most protective setting design of any October option. Opal also contains water (between 3–21% by weight) and can craze — develop a network of surface cracks — if it loses water rapidly through prolonged low humidity, excessive heat, or sustained UV exposure. Solid opal should be stored away from heat sources and periodic exposure to mild humidity helps prevent crazing in older stones.

Tourmaline is a boron silicate mineral group that occurs in a wider range of colors than almost any other gemstone — pink, red, green, blue, yellow, black, and combinations including watermelon tourmaline (pink core, green exterior). At Mohs 7–7.5, it is substantially more durable than opal for daily ring wear. Paraíba tourmaline — an electric neon blue-green variety from Brazil and Mozambique colored by copper — is among the most vivid colors available in any gemstone and among the rarest and most expensive.

In jewelry: Opal suits settings designed to cradle the stone at low elevation — bezel and low-profile designs protect its edges and reduce impact risk. Tourmaline in its vivid color varieties suits any modern setting. Browse: opal engagement rings.

Topaz in its natural pure form is colorless. The most commercially widespread topaz sold today is blue topaz — almost all of which has been irradiated and heat-treated to produce its color, as natural blue topaz is rare. The blue topaz range (sky blue, Swiss blue, London blue) spans from pale ice blue to a deep grayish-blue that approaches indicolite tourmaline in intensity. Imperial topaz — the orange to pink-orange variety found primarily in Ouro Preto, Brazil — is the most historically significant color and the most valuable, occurring naturally without treatment.

Topaz at Mohs 8 is hard, but it has one important structural characteristic that affects ring design: perfect basal cleavage. This means topaz can split cleanly along one specific plane with relatively modest force applied in the right direction — a property relevant to how it is set and how it is worn. Topaz in a setting that might be knocked directly on its base face is more vulnerable than a rounded brilliant cut in the same scenario. Bezel settings or secure prong configurations that protect the stone from direct impact on its cleavage plane are appropriate for topaz rings.

Citrine is quartz colored yellow to orange-brown by iron impurities. Much commercial citrine is heat-treated amethyst — natural citrine is rarer. At Mohs 7 and without topaz's cleavage vulnerability, citrine is a practical choice for daily wear that requires less setting-design caution than its November counterpart. Its golden to amber yellow suits warm metal tones particularly well.

In jewelry: Imperial topaz in yellow gold creates a historically resonant combination — imperial topaz's orange warmth deepens noticeably against warm metal. Browse: birthstone jewelry.

Tanzanite is a blue-violet variety of the mineral zoisite, found in only one geological area on earth — a small zone near the Merelani Hills in northern Tanzania, near Mount Kilimanjaro. Its geological rarity is absolute: unlike most gemstones that occur in multiple locations worldwide, tanzanite has no other known source. The stone is also trichroic — it appears blue, violet, and burgundy depending on the viewing angle. Most cut tanzanite is oriented to show blue or blue-violet face-up, but the other colors are visible when the stone is rotated.

Tanzanite at Mohs 6.5–7 requires careful handling for a daily wear ring. It has two cleavage planes that can make it more fragile under impact than its hardness suggests. It is best suited to protective settings — bezels or secure four-prong configurations — and should be removed during activities with high impact risk. Its rarity and declining supply (the single mine is estimated to be exhausted within decades) makes it a stone with genuine investment character alongside its aesthetic one.

Turquoise is one of the oldest gemstones in continuous use — it appears in Egyptian jewelry from 3,000 BCE and was sacred in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. Its sky blue to blue-green color comes from copper and iron. At Mohs 5–6, it is among the softer birthstones and is typically used in cabochon (domed, uncut) form rather than faceted. It should be kept away from acids, chemicals, and prolonged moisture.

Blue Zircon should not be confused with cubic zirconia (CZ), which is a completely different synthetic material. Zircon is a natural mineral (zirconium silicate) with high refractive index and dispersion that approaches diamond's optical character. Heat-treated blue zircon produces a vivid electric blue that is one of the most striking colors in the birthstone system. At Mohs 7.5, it is practical for jewelry but is somewhat brittle and benefits from protective settings.

In jewelry: Tanzanite's blue-violet depth suits platinum and white gold, which let the stone's cool tonal complexity read clearly. Browse: birthstone jewelry.