It is white with tints of yellow, green, brown or red due to impurities.

It has a vitreous to pearly luster, a Mohs hardness of 3 to 3.5 and a specific gravity of 3.00 to 3.07.

It is colorless in thin section, optically biaxial positive with refractive indices of nα = 1.644 – 1.648, nβ = 1.654 – 1.657 and nγ = 1.661 – 1.668.

Boehmite occurs in tropical laterites and bauxites developed on alumino-silicate bedrock.

It was first described by J. de Lapparent in 1927 for an occurrence in the bauxites of Mas Rouge, Les Baux-de-Provence, France, and named[6] for the Bohemian-German chemist Johann Böhm (1895–1952) who carried out X-ray studies of aluminium oxide hydroxides in 1925[7] (and not for the German geologist Johannes Böhm (1857–1938) as often stated).