Dark opals are a great way to own a larger impressive stone in carat weight and display a lighter body tone of between N5 and N6 on the body tone scale.
The potch on a dark opal is usually a gray potch and is slightly more common than our black opal and can be found in every other opal mining field in Australia making dark opal a more plentiful supply.
An opal classified as dark rather than black often exhibits some of the most prized colourations. Consider the colors of a tropical ocean, the lighter blues, aquamarines and mint greens, coupled with golds and oranges - these are often the colors found in dark opal. Dark opals are usually also the most likely to have the unicorn of color - the elusive pinks and blues together. Because the body tone is not as dark, red becomes more pink and seems to us to be more abundant in the dark opals.