Tourmaline bi-color, also known as bi-colored tourmaline, is a variety of the gemstone tourmaline that combines two colors, most often pinkish red and green. For that reason, it is also referred to as watercolor tourmaline.
Other color combinations are also possible, such as yellow and red, or brown and green, but these are extremely rare. In such cases, bi-colored tourmaline's price can be very high.
Bi-colored tourmaline is typically red in the center and has a green outer layer, or the other way around. It's usually cut in a way that one side of the gemstone displays one of the two colors, which transfuses into the other color. Bi-colored tourmaline is used in jewelry due to its attractive appearance and relative hardness (7 to 7.5 on Mohs scale), and is often used in pendants. Tri-colored tourmaline also exists, although it's very unusual.
Apart from color, clarity and size also affect bi-colored tourmaline's value; bigger exemplars are not particularly rare, but are still more valuable than smaller ones, regarding their price per carat weight.
Bi-colored tourmaline is found in many tourmaline mining sites across the world, as for example in Brazil, Madagascar, Nigeria and the States.
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