A Complete Guide to Lab Grown Diamonds

A Complete Guide to Lab Grown Diamonds

 

Everything you need to know about lab-created diamonds and understanding lab diamond quality, value and certification.

 

Dazzling brilliance. Scintillating reflections. Enduring beauty. Nothing dances with light and fire like diamonds. Is it any wonder that they are the most coveted gem on earth? Of course, rare natural diamonds are valuable. That’s why today everyone is talking about a more affordable alternative: lab-grown diamonds. While we love the romance, beauty and rarity of natural diamonds, the opportunity to own man-made brilliance on a budget is undoubtedly intriguing. 

 

Sales of lab-grown diamonds have been surging over the past year. Today about half of our customers are choosing this less expensive way to sparkle. Are lab-created diamonds right for you too? In this complete guide to lab grown diamonds, we’ll answer all your questions and give you the pros and cons of lab-grown diamonds so you can decide for yourself if you want to buy lab grown diamonds instead of natural diamonds in your engagement ring, stud earrings, tennis bracelet or necklace. We sell both natural diamonds and lab-grown diamonds so we’re not here to convince you that one is better than the other. We’ll spare you the sales pitch and stick to the facts so you can make up your own mind.

 

What Are Lab Grown Diamonds?

 

First, let’s get one thing straight. Lab grown diamonds are diamonds. Just like natural diamonds, they are transparent crystals of pure carbon with really exceptional physical properties. Lab grown diamonds are optically, chemically and physically the same as mined diamonds, with the same brilliance, fire, scintillation and hardness. In other words, they don’t just look like diamonds, they are diamonds and have exactly the same properties as mined diamonds.

 

Diamonds are pure crystals of carbon and are the only gem made of a single element. However,  what makes diamonds special is their structure. The world is full of carbon; crumbly charcoal is carbon and you’re mostly carbon too. But in diamond, five carbon atoms are bonded so closely in a tetrahedron that you’d have to take a spaceship to a neutron star to find atoms packed more tightly. That’s why diamonds are beautifully transparent and stronger than titanium. They slow light passing through them to half speed, creating unique and dazzling optical effects. 

 

What is the Difference Between Natural and Lab Grown Diamonds?

The primary difference between natural diamonds and lab-grown diamonds is where and how they form. Natural diamond crystals grew deep within the earth a billion years ago.Over millennia,  they crystallized slowly in molten rock at tremendous heat and pressure.  Because the ultra deep volcanic eruptions that brought them to the surface stopped when the continents separated hundreds of millions of years ago, there won’t be more natural diamonds made. In contrast, lab grown diamonds form in a few weeks in a lab or factory. Although there are fewer lab grown diamonds on the market today, there are no limits to how many can be created in the future.

 

There’s another important difference between these two types of diamonds: lab grown diamonds are much more affordable than natural diamonds. As the technology to produce better qualities and larger sizes have improved, the prices of lab grown diamonds have gone down. In fact, prices of lab grown diamonds have dropped dramatically in the last few years, which is no doubt why sales have increased so much. It also means that people who bought lab grown diamonds in the past could buy the same jewelry today for much less.

 

You might be confused by all the different terms used to refer to lab-grown diamonds. You can blame SEO for a lot of the confusion. Because people search for lab grown diamonds, laboratory grown diamonds, lab created diamonds, laboratory created diamonds, man-made diamonds and synthetic diamonds, most sellers try to use all of these terms on their websites. Some companies prefer other terms to try to make their products seem more attractive. Most companies today use either lab-grown or lab-created.

 

According to the Federal Trade Commission Guides for the Jewelry Industry,diamonds that are made rather than mined should be marketed as laboratory-grown diamonds, laboratory-created diamonds, man-made diamonds,  (Company Name)-created diamonds, or similar terms. In the past, the FTC Jewelry Guides also said that lab-grown diamonds could also be called synthetic diamonds but are no longer recommended because it found that this kind of technical term wasn’t understood by the public. Nevertheless, some international natural diamond organizations still prefer synthetic to lab-grown or lab-created, probably because they think that this language makes lab-grown diamonds sound less attractive to consumers.

 

ICON SECTION

Why Lab Grown Diamonds?

 

Affordable Brilliance

Lab grown diamonds are affordable: It’s possible to  afford a big beautiful carat weight without sacrificing quality.

 

Dazzling Quality

Lab grown diamonds have all diamond’s brilliance, beauty and durability and are visually identical to natural diamonds.

 

Independently Certified

Lab grown diamonds are graded by independent laboratories and held to the same 4C grading standards as mined diamonds.

 

Responsibly Sourced

Lab grown diamonds are made, not mined, and can be produced with renewable energy for a small carbon footprint.

 

 

How Lab Grown Diamonds Are Made

 

A few days before Christmas in 1954, scientist H. Tracy Hall decided to run one more test on his new design for a superheated high-pressure chamber in his lab at General Electric. When he opened the crucible, he saw tiny sparkling crystals of diamond- the first ever created by man. During the decades to follow, tiny lab-created diamonds were made as the world’s best abrasive, like precious sandpaper. Finally, bigger crystals were grown. For many years, growing larger lab diamond crystals was more expensive and difficult than finding them in the ground. At first they were all dark yellow. Gradually, growers improved the color, producing colorless and fancy colors such as blue, pink and yellow. 

 

Only in the last ten years has diamond-growing technology improved enough to have affordable lab-grown diamonds in the size and quality that consumers want to wear in fine jewelry. There are two processes used today to grow lab-created diamonds: High-Pressure High-Temperature, or HPHT, and Carbon Vapor Deposition, or CVD.

 

HPHT growth uses a pressure chamber like the one Hall and his colleagues used. In this process, diamond seeds are placed in a chamber with molten metal and carbon and subjected to high pressure and heat to reproduce the conditions deep in the earth where diamonds form naturally. Diamond crystals grow on the seeds, like rock crystal candy precipitating out from a sugar solution. After a few weeks, the chamber is opened to reveal newly-grown diamond crystals. HPHT growth is used most often for small diamond sizes.

 

Today most larger diamonds are grown by the new CVD process. Unlike HPHT, CVD growth happens under very low pressure. This isn’t like how diamonds form in the earth. Methane and hydrogen gasses are heated in a vacuum chamber with microwaves until they form a white-hot charged plasma. A temperature gradient encourages the carbon atoms in the methane to deposit, atom by atom, on a diamond seed plate. So, CVD diamonds grow like a cake, layer by layer, with each layer of carbon atoms bonding to the layer before. The resulting crystal looks like the ice that forms on the top of a lake. CVD Diamonds are sometimes heated in an HPHT chamber after growth to improve their color and clarity, a two-step process that results in large colorless lab-created diamond rough.

 

After the lab grown diamond rough is produced, lab grown diamonds are cut and polished just like natural diamonds. They are lasered into rough shapes. Finally, facets are meticulously cut and polished at the perfect angles to maximize internal reflection and refraction, resulting in sparkle and brilliance.

 

Lab Grown Diamonds and Quality

 

Lab grown diamonds have the same quality characteristics as mined diamonds. They are graded using the same 4Cs of diamond quality: color, clarity, cut and carat weight. When you put lab grown and natural diamonds with the same grades next to each other, you can expect them to look the same. Lab grown diamonds are also cut in the same shapes and facet patterns as natural diamonds.  Because the rough can be grown to order, it’s less common to see lab grown diamonds with non-standard proportions.

 

Lab grown diamonds are remarkably pure: they are classified as Type IIa, the most chemically pure type of diamond. Type IIa diamonds have no nitrogen impurities, which cause the yellow tint common in natural diamonds. Less than 5% of natural diamonds are Type IIa. Because lab-grown diamonds are so pure, it’s more common to have them be colorless than it is for natural diamonds. You will often see F color and above lab-grown diamonds with exceptional clarity. That means the premium for high color and clarity grades is less for lab grown diamonds than for natural diamonds.

 

Lab Grown Diamond Certificates

 

Just like natural diamonds, every lab grown diamond above 0.50 carats should have an accompanying grading report from an independent gemological laboratory. The same grading laboratories that issue grading reports for natural diamonds also issue lab grown diamond grading reports. Generally, lab grown diamond grading reports are a different color and include details of the growth process and post-growth treatment, if any.  Most labs also add a microscopic laser inscription to the girdle of the lab grown diamond that includes the words “lab-grown” and the report number.

 

For natural diamonds, we always recommend reports from the Gemological Institute of America, the world’s most prestigious gem grading lab and gemological educational institution. Because GIA is a non-profit founded on a mission of consumer protection and trade protection, GIA reports are considered the gold standard of diamond grading reports.

 

However, most lab-grown diamonds are accompanied by reports from the International Gemological Institute, a less-prestigious grading laboratory. IGI was the first independent gemological laboratory to issue grading reports for lab grown diamonds. GIA offered only limited reports with wide grade ranges. Diamond growers to this day prefer IGI reports and they have become the standard for lab grown diamonds.

 

Having the same grading report for different diamonds you are considering allows you to compare apples to apples. When you are comparing the quality and price of several diamonds, make sure you are comparing grades issued by the same lab.

 

How Do People Tell If a Diamond is Lab Grown?

 

You won’t be able to tell if a diamond is lab grown, even by looking under magnification. However, it’s important to note that every gem reflects the environment where it formed. Before they are cut and polished, lab grown crystals and natural diamond crystals look very different. External differences are polished away when the rough is cut into the sparkling faceted gems used in jewelry. Additionally,  the differences in where and how lab grown diamonds and natural diamonds form (and how long it takes) also leave microscopic clues with the crystal structure. 

 

Gemologists can identify lab-grown diamonds using subtle differences in their absorption spectroscopy, microscopic metallic inclusions, and fluorescence and phosphorescence. Although there isn’t a simple lab grown diamond detector, the Gemological Institute of America’s iD100 diamond origin testing machine can test for Type IIa diamonds, which includes all lab-grown diamonds. This machine screens out all lab grown diamonds, passes the 98% of natural diamonds that are not Type IIa and refers the other 2%, which are natural Type IIa diamonds, for advanced testing by a professional gemological laboratory.

 

What Lab Grown Diamonds are Not

 

Lab grown diamonds might sometimes be confused with natural diamonds. Sometimes they are also confused with imitation diamonds: other lab grown gemstones that look similar to diamonds but are other materials. These look-alikes are sometimes called “simulated diamonds.” The most popular ones are cubic zirconia, or CZ, and moissanite. Sometimes companies create other types of simulants, like CZ or lab-grown sapphire with a microscopic coating of diamond or another type of treated or assembled stone. 

 

The Federal Trade Commission has issued many warnings to companies to be clear about what their products are and what they are not. What they are not is diamond, lab grown or otherwise. That means all their physical, chemical and optical properties are different from a diamond: they don’t have the same refractive index, hardness, dispersion or density (called specific gravity in gemology.) Because all their properties are different, the same quality standards and grades don’t apply. Although they might be colorless and sparkly they aren’t diamond and don’t look the same. They won’t endure in the same way either.

 

The Ethics of Lab Grown Diamonds

 

Just because a diamond is lab-grown doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s ethical and sustainable. Growing diamonds takes a lot of energy. If that energy comes from renewable power, like solar, wind or hydropower, lab grown diamonds have a relatively low carbon footprint that can be offset. But if the power comes from burning fossil fuels, the carbon footprint is much larger. 

 

The natural diamond business has worked globally to provide more information about every step in the supply chain, tracing diamonds from the mine to the retailer. At RockHer, we provide documented provenance for all our natural diamonds, so you can easily trace all our diamonds from mine to market and be sure that you are not supporting conflict, child labor, or unsafe manufacturing conditions with your diamond purchase.

 

We’d love to be able to give you the same transparent and documented provenance for our lab grown diamonds too. Currently, it’s not available for all our lab-grown gems. If the environmental impact of your lab-grown diamonds is important to you, contact us and we can select only lab-grown diamonds created by SCS-Global Sustainability-Rated Producers. SCS Global Services, the company that pioneered the Forest Stewardship Council standard and USDA Organic, also created the standards for Sustainability Rated Producers, who can be either companies that mine diamonds or that grow diamonds. Companies must pass third party audits of all energy use to be certified and offset all travel, employee commuting and shipping as well as legacy emissions.

 

Of course, the environmental impact isn’t the only ethical dimension to consider. The choice to buy lab grown diamonds instead of mined diamonds has a negative impact on people around the world who mine diamonds. Mining diamonds does support many artisanal miners and mining company employees, their families and their communities in Africa and other regions of the world. For example, one-third of the GDP of Botswana, is revenue from diamond mining which funds free healthcare and education for all citizens. Is it more ethical to support communities in the emerging world or to buy a high-tech product created in the developed world? 

 

Are Lab Grown Diamonds Right for Me?

 

Lab grown diamonds aren’t right for everyone, but for some people they are a good way to stretch their budget to get the quality and carat size they want. Lab grown diamonds deliver a big beautiful engagement ring, sparkling stud earrings and impressive classic jewelry styles on a budget. Lab grown diamonds that are sustainably grown can also offer luxury that’s carbon neutral. Additionally,  lab grown diamonds have a simpler supply chain that is unlikely to pass through troubled nations of the world. Today most lab grown diamonds are grown and cut in India.

 

However, the prices for lab grown diamonds have been falling steadily over the past few years. That may continue in the future. You shouldn’t buy lab grown diamonds if you are expecting your jewelry to hold or increase its value. You shouldn’t view your lab grown diamond jewelry as something that can be cashed out in the future.

 

Not all the value of diamonds is monetary. Diamonds symbolize love, commitment, strength and confidence. Natural diamonds are also the oldest things any of us will ever touch: billion-year old time capsules of the deep early earth that traveled to the surface in ancient volcanoes. They are rare and exceptional natural treasures. Natural diamonds are deeply romantic and meaningful. A natural diamond engagement ring is the traditional way to say “forever.”

 

Lab-grown diamonds are scientific alchemy, the result of decades of research trying to turn common carbon into the world’s most treasured gemstone.  They are an amazing technical achievement with lots of potential to create the next generation of computers as well as a beautiful way to adorn yourself and the ones you love. Do lab-grown diamonds say what you want to say? That’s for you to decide.

 

Now that you understand the similarities and differences between lab made and natural diamonds you can make an informed decision on which is right for you. If you care about tradition, history, rarity, and owning something that formed a billion years ago deep in the earth, natural diamonds are the right choice for you.  But if you prefer a larger, better quality gem that costs less, a modern sustainably grown lab created diamond is the right choice for you.

 

 

Lab Grown Diamond FAQs

 

Are lab-grown diamonds real?

Lab grown diamonds are diamonds, just diamonds that are made by man not mined from the earth. They have all the same optical, chemical and physical properties as mined diamonds. Is ice that forms in a freezer less real than ice that forms on a lake? There are subtle differences, but they are both frozen water.

 

Are lab grown diamonds fake?

Lab grown diamonds aren’t an imitation of a diamond that mimics the way diamond looks. They are actual diamonds that are produced in a lab. They are very different from simulated stones like CZ and moissanite, which are lab grown minerals that might look similar to diamonds but aren’t diamonds.

 

How can I tell the difference between lab grown diamonds and natural diamonds?

You can’t. There is no way for consumers to easily identify lab grown diamonds or tell them apart from natural diamonds on their own. You can look for the “lab grown” inscription on a diamond’s girdle which references its grading report number, but if there is no inscription, you will need advanced gemological testing at a professional gemological laboratory to tell the difference. Because laboratory-grown diamonds are chemically, physically and optically the same as natural diamonds, traditional gemological testing and diamond detectors can’t see any difference. Advanced detectors can identify Type IIa diamonds, which include all lab-grown diamonds and about 5% of natural diamonds. Type IIa diamonds can be sent to a lab for further testing. That’s why you should always request a grading report from an independent gemological laboratory when you buy diamonds.

 

Why do people choose lab grown diamonds?

Lab grown diamonds are more affordable than natural diamonds so consumers can afford a larger carat weight and a better quality for the same budget. Some consumers choose lab grown diamonds because they think that diamonds produced in a lab are more ethical, less likely to have funded conflict and more sustainable than natural diamonds. That is often, but not always, the case. If the ethics of your diamonds are important to you, you need to ask exactly how and where they were produced, no matter whether they are mined or laboratory grown.

 

What is the difference between lab grown diamonds and lab created diamonds?

These are two popular names for the same thing: actual diamonds that are made by man in a laboratory, not mined from the earth. Both names are specifically allowed in the Federal Trade Commission Guides for the Jewelry Industry.  Because both names are used by consumers when shopping, you’ll generally see both used by retailers.

 

Why are lab grown diamonds so expensive?

Diamonds are really amazing, the most molecularly dense material on earth, and they form naturally only deep within Earth’s mantle, 100 miles below the surface where the heart and pressure are immense. It took a century of research to devise the technology to make them at the surface of the earth. It takes a lot of energy and it’s still difficult and expensive to create large colorless and transparent crystals.

 

What’s the difference between lab grown diamonds and CZ?

Cubic zirconia, or CZ, is a lab-grown zirconium oxide grown specifically as a diamond imitation. Zirconium doesn’t form cubic crystals naturally. To create CZ, it has to have a chemical stabilizer added to make it stable at room temperature. Usually CZ crystals have either yttrium or calcium oxide added to keep them stable. That means CZ has a range of physical, chemical and optical properties. It also means that some CZ isn’t completely stable and will yellow and degrade over time. CZ has a hardness of about 8.5. Unlike CZ, lab-grown diamonds are actually diamonds. Lab grown diamonds are physically, chemically, and optically identical to mined diamonds.  The only difference is where they formed. Natural diamonds formed a billion years ago deep within the earth and lab-grown diamonds are made by man using high-tech equipment.

 

What’s the difference between lab grown diamonds and moissanite?

Moissanite is lab-grown crystallized silicon carbide. It generally doesn’t form naturally although tiny green grains have been found as ejecta at meteor craters. Moissanite is doubly refractive, which means when you look at it closely you will see two blurry reflections of each facet. Most moissanite is an off-white shade with a slight tint of green. Recently some producers have found a way to heat treat the material to create whiter polished stones. Moissanite has higher dispersion than diamond, which means you will see more rainbow reflections, what gemologists refer to as the “disco ball effect.” All these properties make it visually different from lab grown and natural diamonds.

 

Do lab grown diamonds have any resale value?

Although resale companies like The Real Real and Worthy do resell lab-grown diamond jewelry, prices have decreased over the past few years. It’s safe to assume that prices may also decrease in the future.

 

Are lab grown diamonds worth anything?

Of course! Although lab-grown diamonds generally sell for less than mined diamonds they are worth much more than imitations. However, that isn’t the same thing as appreciating in value. Like all jewelry, used lab grown diamond jewelry is generally worth less than new jewelry of the same quality at the time of resale.

 

Are lab grown diamonds better for the environment?

Lab grown diamonds are grown using a lot of energy. Their environmental impact depends on how that energy is produced. If lab grown diamonds are produced using renewable energy like solar, wind or hydropower the impact is much lower than if the energy is produced using fossil fuels.

 

Are lab grown diamonds OK for an engagement ring?

Natural diamonds are the traditional choice for engagement rings. Many couples on a budget who are looking for a larger size center stone are opting for a lab grown diamond instead. According to a survey of recently-engaged couples by The Knot, about one-third of engagement rings now feature lab-grown diamonds.

 

Are lab-grown diamonds or natural diamonds higher in quality?

Both natural diamonds and lab grown diamonds are available in a range of qualities. Neither is inherently better in quality. An independent grading report is the best way to compare the quality of diamonds, whether they are natural diamonds or lab-grown diamonds. Lower color grades of lab-grown diamonds are more likely to have a brown tint and lower color grades of natural diamonds are more likely to have a yellow tint.

 

Can people tell it’s a lab-grown diamond?

No one will be able to tell that your diamond is lab grown just by looking at it, even with a jeweler’s loupe. Only a trained gemologist using specialized detection equipment can tell the difference.