Garnet Gemstone Beads

Frequently asked questions

• Is garnet always red?

  No. Garnet is a family of related minerals, and the family covers nearly every color except blue. Almandine and pyrope are red. Rhodolite is raspberry pink-red. Spessartine is orange. Tsavorite and demantoid are green. Hessonite is cinnamon-orange. The bead trade default is red-toned almandine, but any "garnet" without a color qualifier is most likely almandine or rhodolite.
• Is your garnet treated?

  No, in nearly all cases. Garnet is one of the few colored stones that is almost never treated — no heat, no oil, no dye, no fill, no diffusion at trade scale. The colors are the colors the rough came out of the ground with. Narrow exceptions exist (rare surface-coated hessonite, composite or lab-grown material, dyed lookalikes); when any treatment applies to a specific strand — ask before buying if a listing doesn't specify.
• What's the difference between rhodolite, almandine, and pyrope?

  All three are red-toned garnets, distinguished by chemistry and tone. Almandine is iron-rich, deep wine-to-burgundy with sometimes a brownish undertone — the bead-trade default. Pyrope is magnesium-rich, pure clear red without the brown — historically the "Bohemian garnet." Rhodolite is a pyrope-almandine intergrade with a distinctive raspberry-to-violetish-red color, brighter and more transparent than almandine. Most "red garnet" beads on the market are almandine; rhodolite and pyrope are scarcer.
• How can I tell if garnet beads are real?

  Practical tests include weight (real garnet is denser than glass), a fingernail and steel scratch test (Mohs 6.5–7.5 garnet will scratch glass and resist a steel needle), and an acetone swab on an inconspicuous spot to test for dye. The most reliable signal is buying from a seller who discloses treatment and origin per SKU. Garnet's high refractive index (1.72–1.94) gives it a characteristic internal fire that glass and dyed agate do not match.
• What is tsavorite?

  Tsavorite is the green chrome- or vanadium-colored variety of grossular garnet, first discovered in 1967 in the Tsavo National Park region on the Kenya/Tanzania border. It's rarer than emerald, more durable than emerald (Mohs 7+ and free of the internal fracturing that makes emerald famously fragile), and untreated where emerald is universally oiled. Bead-grade tsavorite is its own market — typically translucent rather than the transparent gem-grade material used in fine cut stones — and is among the rarer varieties in the garnet family.