Is it OK to buy one?
Yes. A lab-grown diamond is a diamond: the same carbon lattice, the same hardness, the same behaviour in light, graded on the same scales by the same laboratories. Nobody is going to look at the ring and see a substitute, because there is nothing visible to see. That is settled science, and it has been for years.The question underneath is usually social rather than technical. People ask whether it is OK because they are worried about a moment: her friend asking where the stone is from, or a parent who followed the rules of a different decade. Two answers to that. The first is that the stone cannot be identified as lab-grown by eye, by loupe, or by any jeweller without screening equipment. The second is that the market has moved so far that the assumption now runs the other way, and a natural stone is the one people ask about.As for why anyone chooses one deliberately, there are three honest reasons and they are all about the money. The same budget buys a much larger or much better stone. Nothing has to be traded away, so you can have the colour, the clarity and the cut rather than picking two. And you can order the exact stone you want instead of taking what happens to be available. What lab-grown is not is automatically the greener choice: a reactor running on coal-fired power is not obviously kinder than a well-run mine, and anyone claiming certainty in either direction is selling something.
How many people actually buy them
Most people, now. The best public number comes from The Knot, which surveys more than ten thousand couples in the United States every year. Lab-grown centre stones went into 61 per cent of engagement rings bought by couples who married in 2025, up from 52 per cent the year before and 12 per cent in 2019.
Share of engagement rings with a lab-grown centre stone
Two caveats worth stating plainly. That data is American, and nobody runs a study of the same scale here, so the honest Australian answer is that we are following the same curve without knowing exactly where on it we sit. And our own order book is useless as evidence, because it reflects who shops with us rather than the market. What we can say from it is that the question we get asked has changed: two years ago people asked whether lab-grown was real, and now they ask what size they can get.Crossing half the market matters for one practical reason. The stigma question answers itself once the thing is the default. If a majority of the rings in the room are lab-grown, no one is inspecting yours.Half of all rings
12%
46%
52%
61%
2019202320242025
The Knot Real Weddings Study, United States, by year of marriage. No survey of this size exists for Australia.What the same money buys either way
This is the whole decision, so it is worth seeing rather than reading. Hold the budget at $6,000 for a finished ring, hold the colour, clarity and cut grades constant, keep the same 18ct gold solitaire, and change only where the crystal came from.Two and a half times the weight, but only about a third wider on the finger. That is not a trick: carat weight measures volume and what you look at is a disc, so size on the hand always grows more slowly than the number does. It is still a difference anyone would notice from across a table.The same gap shows up in what people actually spend. In The Knot's 2025 figures, couples buying natural paid about US$7,000 and averaged 1.6 carats, while couples buying lab-grown paid about US$4,300 and averaged 2 carats. Less money, more stone, which is the trade almost everyone is making.
One budget, two origins, drawn to the same scale$6,000 all in
Mined
1 carat
6.5 mm acrossG colour, VS2, excellent cut, 18ct gold solitaireA proper engagement diamond, and about as much of one as this budget stretches to.
Lab-grown
2.5 carats
8.8 mm acrossG colour, VS2, excellent cut, 18ct gold solitaireSame grades, same setting, a stone that covers most of the width of an average finger.
Where we would put the differenceIf the mined ring at $6,000 was already the plan, the interesting move is not to buy a 2.5 carat lab-grown stone. It is to buy a 1.5 carat one and spend the rest on a setting made for her hand. Carat weight is the easiest thing to buy and the least personal.
What you gain and what you give up
Every material choice costs something. Here is the ledger as we would write it for a customer sitting in front of us, including the entries that do not help us sell anything.
Lab-grown, weighed honestly
The right-hand column has one entry that does real damage and three that mostly do not. Resale is the real one. Lab-grown stones are not an asset, the secondhand market for them is thin, and a jeweller will usually decline to buy one back at any price you would accept. If your plan involves the ring being worth money later, that plan does not work with a lab-grown stone, and it works less well than people think with a natural one. Our guide to the tradeoffs goes into what jewellers will and will not do with a stone you bring back.Insurance is the practical version of the same point, and it cuts the other way for once. Replacement cost is what you insure, and for a lab-grown stone that cost keeps falling, so the sum insured should be reviewed every few years rather than set once and forgotten. Ask your insurer whether the policy replaces like for like or pays a fixed sum.What you gain
Two to three times the carat weight for the same money, with cut and clarity held constant.
Top colour and clarity become affordable instead of aspirational, so nothing has to be traded away.
You can specify a stone rather than wait for one, because supply is not an accident of geology.
No question about which mine it came from, and no premium paid for the answer.
What you give up
Resale. The secondhand market is thin and jewellers rarely buy stones back.
Scarcity, and the story that goes with it, if that story matters to either of you.
Price stability. Replacement cost has fallen every year since you could buy one.
The approval of the small number of people who still hear lab-grown and think imitation.
Will it still be there in fifty years?
The stone will. There is no mechanism by which a lab-grown diamond ages differently from a mined one, because there is no difference to age. Both sit at 10 on the Mohs scale, harder than anything they will meet in daily life apart from another diamond. They do not cloud, yellow, soften or lose their sparkle. A stone that looks dull is either dirty or was cut badly, and both of those happen to natural diamonds at the same rate.What does wear out is everything around the stone. Claws thin from decades of knocks against door handles and steering wheels. A band goes slightly oval and the shank wears where it rubs. White gold needs replating. Those are the things that will need attention in your lifetime, on any ring, and they are worth more of your worry than the crystal is. Our care guide covers the check-up schedule that keeps a stone in its setting.
Fifty years of wear happens to the metal, not the crystal.One detail worth knowing, because it sounds worse than it is. Some lab-grown diamonds are treated after growth, usually with heat and pressure, to lift a faint brown or grey cast that CVD growth can leave behind. The treatment is permanent, it does not make the stone fragile, and it must be disclosed on the grading report. Read the report rather than the product description, and if a stone is described only as “post-growth treated” with no independent grading behind it, buy a different stone.
Why they cost what they do
People arrive at this question from both directions. Some want to know why a lab-grown ring is thousands of dollars when the stones are “made in a factory”. Others have read that wholesale prices collapsed and cannot see where the money went. The answer to both is that the crystal is the smallest part of the bill.
Where the money goes in a lab-grown ringApproximate proportions for a ring around $6,000, not a price list. A bigger stone pushes the first two slices up; a plainer band pushes the fourth down.
Growing a gem-quality crystal is still slow and power-hungry. A large stone occupies a reactor for weeks, the electricity bill runs the whole time, and a share of what comes out is unusable. But past that point, nothing about the process is cheap because the stone is grown. Cutting and polishing is the same skilled work at the same wheel, with the same weight lost to get the angles right. The grading report costs what it costs. The gold costs what gold costs, and casting, setting and finishing a ring is bench time either way.Which means there is a floor. Below a certain price, someone has left something out: the report, the cut quality, the metal weight, or the part where a person checks the stone is properly seated before it goes in a box.12%
Growing the crystalReactor time, electricity and the stones that come out unusable. Weeks of it for a large one.
16%
Cutting and polishingIdentical skilled labour to a mined stone, and the same loss of weight to get the angles right.
4%
GradingAn independent report and the laser inscription that ties it to the stone.
28%
Metal and bench workGold, casting, setting the stone, finishing. None of it cares where the crystal grew.
40%
Everything elseInsured shipping, sizing and returns, the warranty, the people who answer your questions, and margin.
Will they get cheaper after you buy?
Mostly, that has already happened. The wholesale index that the trade watches, published by analyst Edahn Golan, sits about 96 per cent below where it started in 2018. The steep years were 2020 to 2024. Prices are still drifting down, by around 13 per cent over the year to mid-2026, but the fall is slowing and it is no longer uniform.The split is the useful part. One carat rounds actually firmed slightly in the middle of 2026, the first time that has happened, which reads as a category hitting its production cost floor. Two carat stones fell about 20 per cent over the same year, because that is where the fat wholesale margins used to be and where growers are adding the most supply. Rough crystal prices, meanwhile, have gone up. So the answer depends on size: a one carat stone is priced about where it is going to stay, and a three carat one will probably cost less in two years than it does today.
What to do about itNothing. Waiting for a better price on a ring you want to propose with this year means spending months watching a market to save a few hundred dollars, and it means treating the ring as a trade. If falling replacement cost genuinely bothers you, that is a reason to buy natural, not a reason to wait.
So which should you buy?
The question does not have a general answer, but it has a quick one for any particular couple. It comes down to whether either of you attaches meaning to the stone being old, and whether the ring needs to hold value.
Which origin suits which buyer
We should be straight about our position. maker+stone sets both lab-grown and natural stones, in the same designs and the same carat weights, so either column above can be bought here. Where we do have a view, it is about the money: at every budget we quote, the lab-grown version of the ring buys a bigger, cleaner, better-cut stone in a setting that did not have to be cheapened to afford it. That is a reason, not a verdict, and the mined column lists reasons that are just as good.If the mined column describes you, choose a natural stone and take the grading report as seriously as you would for a lab-grown one. If the lab-grown column describes you, the rest of the decision is the ordinary one every ring buyer faces: shape, size, setting, and how her hand actually looks with it on.Buy mined if
Either of you cares that the crystal is old, and would keep caring for thirty years.
The ring is meant to hold a resale or trade-in value you can point to.
A family member is contributing and has strong feelings about origin.
You are matching or resetting an existing natural stone.
Buy lab-grown if
You want the largest well-cut stone your budget honestly allows.
You would rather put the difference into the setting, the wedding, or nothing at all.
You want a specific shape, size and grade combination without hunting for months.
You are comfortable that the ring is jewellery rather than an asset.
Not sure which column you are in?Tell us the budget and what either of you feels about origin, and we will tell you what we would do, and what the same ring looks like with each stone.
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