Does Tiffany use lab-grown diamonds?
No. Every diamond Tiffany & Co. has ever sold came out of the ground, and the company put that in writing before most Australians had heard the phrase lab-grown. Its 2017 annual filing to the United States securities regulator lists synthetic and treated diamonds as a risk to the business and states that the company “does not produce and does not intend to purchase or sell such diamonds”. Nothing has changed since. If you buy a Tiffany engagement ring today, the stone was mined.What Tiffany does instead is document the mining. Since January 2019 it has told customers the region or country of origin of each individually registered diamond, which it was the first global luxury jeweller to do, and in 2020 it extended that to the full cutting and polishing journey. Most of its rough comes from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Canada, and it employs close to 1,500 of its own cutters and polishers across workshops in Belgium, Mauritius, Botswana, Vietnam and Cambodia. The traceability programme is the direct commercial answer to lab-grown: if the appeal of a grown stone is knowing exactly where it came from, Tiffany would like you to know exactly where its mined one came from too.So the answer to whether Tiffany diamonds are mined or lab-grown is simple, and the interesting part is the reasoning behind it. It is not gemmological. Tiffany has never argued that a grown diamond is a worse diamond.
Watch the second-hand marketBecause Tiffany has never sold a grown stone, an authenticated pre-owned Tiffany ring is always mined. That also means anything sold as a “Tiffany-style” ring with a lab-grown stone has no connection to the company at all. The setting is a design anyone can copy, and plenty of Australian jewellers do, including us.
Why Tiffany says no
Three things are going on, and only the first one ever makes it into a press release.The first is brand. Tiffany has spent more than 180 years teaching people that a diamond is rare, and a stone that can be grown to order in a few weeks is not rare. In 2019 the executive then running its diamond supply told Forbes the company's position was that lab-grown diamonds are not a luxury material and have no role in a luxury brand. Note the word he chose. Not inferior, not fake: not luxury.The second is arithmetic. Suppose Tiffany put a grown two carat beside a mined two carat in the same window, identical to the eye, one at a third of the price. The mined stone would have to justify the gap in a single glance, in front of a customer who had just been shown that it cannot. No house prices its own bestseller against a cheaper twin on purpose. The refusal protects a margin, and there is nothing scandalous in that, but it is worth naming.The third is that Tiffany's own owner does not agree with Tiffany. LVMH bought the company in January 2021 for about US$15.8 billion. The year after, LVMH's investment arm took a minority stake in a lab-grown diamond grower, and another LVMH brand put 11.7 carats of grown diamonds into a watch.
One owner, three positionsSources: LVMH's acquisition of Tiffany (January 2021); Lusix's announcement of a US$90 million round naming LVMH Luxury Ventures as an investor (2022); TAG Heuer's Carrera Plasma, shown at Watches and Wonders Geneva in March 2022 and reported at US$375,000. LVMH Luxury Ventures states that the companies it invests in are managed independently and are not intended to be acquired by the group.
Which tells you the group is not squeamish about the material. It is running a portfolio, and each brand has a job. Tiffany's job is to sell mined diamonds at mined-diamond prices, so Tiffany says no. TAG Heuer sells watches, where a diamond is a component rather than the promise, so TAG Heuer says yes and nobody at LVMH is embarrassed. Read the refusal as a statement about brand architecture, because that is what it is.LVMHMoët Hennessy Louis Vuitton
Tiffany & Co.Mined onlyAcquired by LVMH in January 2021 for about US$15.8 billion. Has never sold a lab-grown diamond and says it has no intention of starting.
TAG HeuerLab-grownShowed the Carrera Plasma at Watches and Wonders in 2022, a US$375,000 watch set with 11.7 carats of lab-grown diamonds.
LusixGrows themIsraeli grower running solar-powered reactors outside Tel Aviv. LVMH Luxury Ventures took a minority stake in a US$90 million round in 2022.
What the refusal does not claimNothing in Tiffany's position says a grown diamond is physically inferior, and it would be a strange claim to make. Lab-grown diamonds are carbon in the same crystal structure, they measure the same hardness, they are graded by the same laboratories on the same four Cs, and no jeweller can separate them from mined stones by eye. Our guide to telling one from the other covers what it actually takes.
Cartier, and the rest of Richemont
Also no, and Cartier's parent is blunter about it than Tiffany. Richemont set the policy out in its 2018 corporate responsibility report: the group will neither buy nor sell synthetic diamonds, and it has taken technical steps to make sure the two kinds never mix in its supply chain or its workshops. That covers Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Piaget and Buccellati, so it is a good deal broader than one maison's taste.Cartier's chief executive at the time, Cyrille Vigneron, gave the cleanest version of the objection anyone in the trade has managed. His complaint was not about carbon or clarity. It was that a grown stone has no past. He has also allowed that small accent stones are a possible exception, while the promise on a centre stone stays what he called naturality and traceability.
What the houses have said, on the record
The family footnote is too good to leave out. Jean Dousset, the great-great-grandson of Cartier's founder Louis-François Cartier and the designer behind several well-known Hollywood engagement rings, now sells lab-grown diamonds direct to customers under the name Oui by Jean Dousset. He priced a one carat lab-grown ring at about US$4,200 against about US$8,500 for the same ring in mined under his own label, and has said publicly that he applies identical design and craft to both. A century and a half of Cartier heritage, in other words, argues on both sides of this.“Our position is lab-grown diamonds are not a luxury material. We don't see a role for them in a luxury brand.”
Andrew HartThen senior vice president, diamond and jewellery supply, Tiffany & Co. Forbes, 2019.
“They don't have any history. They were made two days before.”
Cyrille VigneronThen chief executive, Cartier. The State of Fashion: Watches and Jewellery, Business of Fashion and McKinsey, 2021.
“Over the last year, the price of lab-grown has continued to fall sharply. We have now gotten to the point where you can buy lab-grown in supermarkets for $200.”
Al CookChief executive, De Beers, on closing its own lab-grown brand. JCK, 2025.
Which brands do sell lab-grown diamonds
Enough of them that the interesting question is not who sells them but what the two lists have in common.
Where the named houses stand, and who owns themPositions as stated by each company: Tiffany's filings and press releases, Richemont's corporate responsibility reporting and Cartier's public remarks, Pandora's 2021 and 2023 announcements, Prada's Eternal Gold updates, De Beers' May 2025 statement on closing Lightbox. Ownership as at 2026.
Every house on the left sells heritage, and its prices depend on the stone being scarce. Every house on the right either has no heritage claim to protect, like Pandora and the direct-to-customer brands, or treats a diamond as decoration on something else, like a watch or a gold chain. No high jewellery maison with a nineteenth-century founder has crossed over, and none looks likely to. If you are waiting for Cartier to change its mind before you feel comfortable, you will be waiting on a decision that has nothing to do with your ring.The line on the right that repays the most attention is the struck-out one. De Beers built Lightbox in 2018 specifically to define lab-grown as a cheap, fun, non-bridal product, priced at a flat US$800 a carat to stop anyone treating it as an investment. The strategy worked in the sense that lab-grown prices did collapse. It failed as a business: Lightbox lost US$101.3 million in 2023, and De Beers closed it in May 2025 to put the money back into marketing natural diamonds. The company still grows synthetic diamonds by the tonne through Element Six, for drill bits and semiconductors. It just will not sell them as jewellery.In Australia the split looks different at street level. Most of the businesses selling lab-grown here are independents and online-first makers rather than the names in the mall, so the shopfronts you walk past give a misleading picture of how common the stones actually are. Pandora is the one chain nearly everyone has passed without registering that it stopped buying mined diamonds altogether in 2021.Houses that refuse
Tiffany & Co.LVMHMined diamonds only. Discloses the country or region of origin of its individually registered stones, and cuts most of them in its own workshops.
CartierRichemontGroup policy is to neither buy nor sell synthetic diamonds, with separated supply chains to keep the two apart. Small accent stones are the one place Cartier has left the door ajar.
Van Cleef & Arpels, Piaget, BuccellatiRichemontCovered by the same group policy as Cartier.
De BeersAnglo AmericanGrows synthetic diamonds for industry through Element Six, and since 2025 sells none as jewellery.
Houses that sell them
PandoraPandora A/SLaunched lab-grown in 2021 and stopped using mined diamonds altogether. Reached Australian stores in August 2023, in 0.15 to 1 carat, set in silver or 14k gold.
Prada Fine JewelleryPrada GroupEternal Gold uses recycled gold and made-to-order lab-grown stones, including a triangular Prada cut, from 0.8 to 5.5 carats.
TAG HeuerLVMHOne limited-edition watch so far, using stones from three growers.
Vrai, Kimai, Oui by Jean DoussetIndependentLab-grown only, sold direct. Oui is run by a great-great-grandson of Cartier's founder, who priced a 1 carat lab-grown ring at about US$4,200 against US$8,500 for the natural equivalent under his own name.
LightboxDe BeersLaunched in 2018 at a flat US$800 a carat to prove lab-grown was a cheap fashion product. Lost US$101.3 million in 2023 and closed in May 2025.
What celebrities actually wear
Yes, celebrities wear lab-grown diamonds, and the detail matters more than the headline. Meghan Markle wore a pair of Kimai's Felicity earrings in 2019, a London brand that uses only grown stones and recycled gold, and the founders have said her team bought them rather than accepting a gift. Emma Watson, Jessica Alba, Zendaya and Rihanna have all been photographed in grown stones. Red carpet jewellery is heavily lab-grown now, because a loaned necklace exists to photograph well for one evening and nobody involved is thinking about resale.
Earrings, cuffs and red carpet loans are where lab-grown has taken hold among the famous. Engagement rings, so far, are the holdout.Engagement rings are the exception, and it is a striking one. The celebrity rings that get talked about are still mined, and increasingly antique: Taylor Swift's 2025 ring is an old mine brilliant cut, a nineteenth-century stone rather than a new one of any origin, which we go into in our guide to the emerald cut. A grown stone offers a famous person nothing they want. They are not short of money, and the whole point of the ring in a magazine is that it could not be had cheaply.
Why this is weak evidence either wayA celebrity wearing lab-grown tells you a brand secured a placement. A celebrity wearing mined tells you they can afford to. Nobody in either photograph paid retail, chose between the two on a real budget, or has to wear the thing to work for the next forty years. Use the pictures for styling ideas and ignore them on origin.
Are lab-grown diamonds unpopular?
This question was fair in about 2019 and is now the opposite of true. Among more than 10,000 couples surveyed by The Knot who married during 2025, 61 per cent of engagement rings had a lab-grown centre stone, a rise of 239 per cent since 2020. Four in ten said it mattered to them specifically that the stone be grown. Average spend fell to US$4,600 from US$5,200 the year before, while the average centre stone grew from 1.7 to 1.9 carats, which is the trade-off in one line.
Share of engagement rings with a lab-grown centre stone
Three things keep the old impression alive. The loudest brands in the category do not stock them, so the top of the market is silent on a stone the middle of the market has already chosen. Trade coverage is dominated by falling lab-grown prices, and cheap reads as failing even when volumes are climbing. And anyone who paid the mined price has a natural interest in the idea that the alternative never caught on.A version of the question that does still hold up: lab-grown remains rare in high jewellery, in auction rooms, and in the windows of the houses on Collins Street. If your idea of popular means visible at the top of the market, they are not popular. If it means what people around you are actually buying, they are the majority.Half of all rings
18%
51%
61%
202020242025
The Knot's 2026 report on couples married in 2025, from a survey of more than 10,000 United States couples. The 2020 reading is implied by the 239 per cent rise the report describes. Other trackers put the figure lower: BriteCo, working from jewellery insurance appraisals, has lab-grown at 47.7 per cent of engagement rings in 2025. No equivalent Australian dataset is published, so treat these as the closest available proxy rather than a local count.Why a lab-grown diamond is worth anything
Because price and rarity are different things. What you pay for a grown stone is the cost of producing it and getting it to you: a reactor running for weeks, a serious amount of electricity, a cutter, a grading report, and a retailer. Lusix runs a 30 megawatt solar farm to power one factory, which gives some sense of the energy involved. That production cost is a floor, and it is nowhere near zero. Nothing about the price rests on scarcity, which is precisely why it behaves so differently from a mined stone.The floor does keep dropping, though, and the industry has stopped pretending otherwise. When De Beers announced it was closing Lightbox in May 2025, it said lab-grown prices in the jewellery sector had fallen 90 per cent at wholesale since 2018 and were now tracking a cost-plus model.
Lab-grown wholesale price per carat, 2018 set to 100
That is the honest shape of it, and it cuts both ways. It is why a two carat lab-grown ring is within reach of an ordinary Australian budget, and why nobody should buy one expecting to sell it later. Our guide to whether prices will keep falling goes further into what that means for something you buy this year.Which brings us to the question everyone eventually asks in the same breath: what is worth more, lab-grown or natural? It depends entirely on which of two things you mean by worth, and the answer flips.2018
100
2025
10
Worth more, two ways
If worth means what you could sell it for, natural wins and it is not close. If it means what you take home for the money on the day, grown wins and that is not close either. The tie-breaker is what you will actually do with the ring, and almost nobody sells an engagement ring. We go through the resale numbers properly in our guide to the tradeoffs, including why jewellers will not buy grown stones back.Natural is worth more
Resale. A mined stone recovers a fraction of what you paid. A lab-grown one recovers close to nothing, because a jeweller can buy a brand new one for less than your used one.
There is a second-hand trade for mined diamonds, with auction houses, dealers and published prices. Nothing equivalent exists for lab-grown, and at current prices nothing is likely to.
Scarcity is the whole basis of the price, so a mined stone holds its number as long as buyers keep believing in the scarcity.
Lab-grown is worth more per dollar
At the same budget you take roughly two to three times the weight, at the same colour and clarity, in the same shapes.
It buys a specification most people cannot reach in mined: a well-cut two carat at G and VS1 rather than a compromised one carat.
Every laboratory grades it on the same four Cs, and no jeweller can pick it out of a tray by eye.
The money you keep is money in your hand today, which is a more certain return than a resale you will probably never test.
What a refusal is worth to you
We sell both lab-grown and natural diamonds, so weigh what follows accordingly. Here is the position: Tiffany's refusal is real information about Tiffany and almost no information about the stone in front of you. It tells you that a house whose price rests on rarity will not undercut itself, which is sound business and says nothing about how a diamond behaves on a hand in daylight.What the choice comes down to is which of two things you are buying. If you want the blue box, the ceremony and the name, buy it, and know you are buying a mined stone at Tiffany's price because those come as a set. If you want the largest well-cut stone your budget will hold, set properly, in something you will wear for fifty years, then no house's sourcing policy changes what a well-cut G at VS1 does in ordinary light. What changes it is the cut, the setting, the grading report and the person who set it.
Comparing us against a name?Send us the specification you have been quoted, from anyone, and we will tell you plainly what the same money buys here and where we would put it differently. If the honest answer is that you want the other ring, we will say so.
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