I love this recent question I received recently about crystals fading in the sunlight. It covered many angles. LURVE IT! It’s a loaded question and — right up my geo-geek ally!


crystals fade in sunlightA:

Well, why some colors fade really has to do with photon physics or particle physics. Oh yeah! I said “PHYSICS” …and you’re gonna like it!

First, let’s simply explain what a photon is.

atom photon

When an electron in an atom has either increased or decreased in energy, it jumps electron shells within the atom (we call that a “quantum leap”). That certain amount of energy can be described as a “little energy packet” — no physical matter, just energy.

Now, it’s that actual teeny-tiny packet of electromagnetic energy that we call a “quantum”, aka a photon of light.

EM energy = light …one and the same. Ya with me? OK. 🙂

Now, when a photon from any source (the Sun, a light bulb, whatevs) hits an atom — 2 things can happen:

  2. If a photon strikes a color-neutral atom, it’s gonna either get bounced off (reflected) or get absorbed as heat. And you won’t see that guy because photons are considered grey or colorless.

Some color fading of naturally natural irradiated crystals will fade over time as the photons become stable. Nothing we can do about that. By the way, artificially irradiated crystals and gemstones seem to fade even more rapidly. If you want to find out more about my precautions about artificial irradiation of minerals go here and scroll to the bottom or read more here.

It seems that UV light specifically is the fading culprit;

…both natural UV (from the sun) or man-made UV.

Yeah, the same kind of UV light that due to its very teeny tiny waves can penetrate our skin and mutate our DNA, which in excessive amounts can lead to skin cancer. So you can see why this kind of light would easily fade crystals, right? Definitely keep your deeply pigmented crystals away from any UV source!

Will LED Light Make my Crystal Fade?

Many have asked me if LED lights (like this one below) can harm our crystals because many like to display them in this way.

Pretty, right?

crystal fade led

From the research I’ve done (if you care to GEEK OUT on this stuff too check it out) — at the moment my answer is NO.

Since LED lights (a handy low energy bulb that produces small amounts of light) are not UV lights, they should have no effect on the photons (unless you’ve purchased special UV LEDs …they do have those) …so, nope they should not fade your crystals. 🙂

Does it Affect Crystal’s Energy?

I don’t feel that fading affects the crystal’s effectiveness greatly, but the color change does somewhat change its dominant osciallary rate (vibrational frequency) as color frequency is part of what makes up that vibration.

The fading didn’t affect the crystal’s basic molecular structure so if it was amethyst before, but now just a light amethyst, it will still do its amethyst thang. 😉

Not all crystals/gems will fade.

Again, it has to do with how stable the atoms are or sometimes it actually has to do with water loss between the molecules! Certain crystals are more prone to fading depending on these factors. And as I mentioned before, if they’ve been irradiated; they can be very susceptible to fading.


So many Crystal Blessings,



