To appreciate the price shifts, consider this: According to Edahn Golan’s Lab-Grown Diamond Wholesale Price List, wholesale lab-grown prices fell 37 percent in 2025, with three-carat stones plunging 43 percent. At the start of 2025, the average price per one-carat diamond was $900. Today you can get one under $300.

I visited Annabelle Jewelers to discuss diamonds with Myra Ehrman. To illustrate the price difference between a lab-grown and a natural diamond, Myra showed me two engagement rings, which I of course tried on. One was a 1.6-carat natural oval diamond in a simple setting, with small chips going down the side. The other one was a two-carat, lab-grown radiant-cut diamond with two smaller (yet quite large) side stones. The oval diamond was priced at $8,500. The radiant diamond, with its side stones and setting, was priced at $2,500. I asked Myra how much the radiant ring would be if it was a natural diamond. She estimated it at around $15,000.

I had a similar experience with Chesky of Be Jeweled in Monsey. Be Jeweled doesn’t carry much lab-grown jewelry; you need to ask for it, as though it’s contraband. Chesky showed me two pairs of studs: larger lab-grown studs, around a carat, and smaller natural studs. The lab-grown ones were $1,200; the natural ones were $1,800.

It’s interesting — the biggest savings happen with large stones. When people buy pieces with smaller stones, yes, the savings are there, but they’re not as pronounced as with large stones.

Myra showed me two identical tennis bracelets; the only difference was the diamonds’ origins. The natural one was $4,500, the lab-grown $2,000. Yes, it’s double the price, but still not as crazy as the price difference between two diamond rings.

The reason for this is two-fold. First, tiny diamonds, even natural ones, aren’t that expensive. So yes, there are a lot of them in the bracelet, but the cost of them individually is much lower than one larger stone.

Second, a large percentage of a bracelet’s cost is in the mounting and setting of the stones. These days, gold is at an all-time high, so the expense of a setting is significant. Myra explained that mountings that used to be $1,000 a year ago are $2,000 today. A lab-grown or natural tennis bracelet is still set in the same mounting, so there’s no saving there.

Additionally, there’s the labor of setting that many stones. The setter doesn’t care if the stone is lab-grown or natural, he does the same work and is paid the same. All this together leads to a slimmer price gap between more tennis bracelets, necklaces, and similar design pieces.

Identical or Different?

So is there a difference between lab-grown and the real deal?

Apparently, the only way to differentiate between natural and lab-grown is through using a jeweler’s loupe and knowing what to look for (nope, it doesn’t say made in China on it, although yes, many are made there), or using a UV light to check for fluorescence (see sidebar).

Can a lay person really not tell the difference between a lab-grown and a natural one?

I wanted to see for myself. I went into a random jewelry store and asked them if they had lab-grown and diamond jewelry. They didn’t sell lab-grown diamonds, but they had a few loose ones in the back. The man behind the counter took one out, together with a natural one the same size. I couldn’t tell which was which. He put them both in a temporary setting and told me, “Guess.”

I asked for this, yet I still felt like I was back in school — pure anxiety. I pointed at the one I thought was natural. It was 90 percent guess, 10 percent intuition.

“Why?” he asked me.

“I dunno, it just seems to have an extra something.”

That made him very happy. “You’re right,” he said.

Instant relief.

As a kicker to the guessing game, the jeweler showed me the certification for each diamond’s grading. The grading for the lab-grown diamond was much higher in both color and cut.

These diamonds shouldn’t have been comparable. There should have been an obvious difference between them, at least in color — and still I instinctively chose the natural one.

This wasn’t a one-time fluke.

At Annabelle Jewelers, Myra did the same test on me with the diamond engagement rings she showed me. “Guess,” she said.

I guessed correctly.

I say guess because I don’t know what I saw, but there was something about the natural diamond; it was more reflective, had more depth than the others. Myra was shocked — she herself needs a jeweler’s loupe to differentiate between the two.

She had an interesting theory about why I was guessing right: She explained that most people who own natural diamonds have them in the color range G, H, I, which is middle of the road, pretty much white, with just a little yellow to it. Synthetic diamonds often have better grading because the process is controlled; a lab diamond graded a D — the highest grade, which is very white — isn’t a rarity, thus lab-grown stones have much higher grading and are whiter than the ones most people are used to seeing. Myra suggested I was instinctively picking up on that because I was used to natural diamonds being more yellow. (I guess it’s like teeth; white teeth are more unnatural!)

Devorah, who’s worked with diamonds for over 20 years, has a theory as to why she can tell the difference between who’s wearing natural or lab-grown. “People carry themselves differently when they’re wearing natural versus lab-grown, and that subtle casualness or that elegance is what tips people off as to the diamond’s origins,” she said. She compared it to setting your Shabbos table with nice paper goods. It’s a beautiful table, but epes, it’s missing the Shabbos touch and elevation of one with your nice China. “You carry the plates in differently, you see your Shabbos table as more elevated. Internal knowledge has real-life physical impact.”

I could see that play out myself. Myra had a few loose diamonds, some lab, some natural. She had me take off my rings and nestle them between my fingers so I could get a good look at them against my skin. There was a four-carat lab-grown, and two-carat and 1.5-carat natural diamonds, and I went meta in my perception. I was definitely less careful with the lab diamond, didn’t hold it as delicately as a diamond should be. Yes, it was gorgeous and sparkly and huuuge (think Donald Trump), but my brain was dismissive.

Frum Trends

What does the market for lab-grown diamonds look like? Research is always my go-to (because actually doing something takes energy). According to The Guardian, synthetic diamonds now make up 45 percent of the bridal jewelry market for the general public, and The Knot reports that 52 percent of engagement rings purchased last year in the US had lab-grown stones.

Be Jeweled sells jewelry to a more heimish and chassidish crowd, and estimates that about 40 percent of kallah jewelry in those circles is lab-grown. Myra, who serves a more yeshivish clientele, put the number at 15 percent.

The difference is explained by culture, they both said. In a more heimish social environment, the size of the diamond matters more than its origin. Also, that velt traditionally gives more gifts during the engagement than the yeshivish crowd, so using lab-grown diamonds translates into thousands of dollars in savings, making them more in favor of the concept.

One jeweler shared that he’s had clients making weddings where the kallah was given a lab-grown diamond, but the chassan’s mother is given a natural diamond piece at the wedding. It seems there’s a mental distinction for some. Lab diamonds are like training wheels, you graduate to natural when you’ve earned it in life experience.

So what’s stopping people from buying lab-grown?

Two of the many jewelers I spoke to compared people’s attitudes toward lab-grown diamonds to their attitudes to Moissanite and Cubic Zirconia (CZ). These jewelers see lab-grown diamonds as another iteration of the imitation diamond trend. They’ve fallen in and out of fashion with consumers. By that logic, if you wouldn’t buy a CZ, then you wouldn’t buy a lab-grown one.

The central thing here, though, is that a layman can pick up the difference between a diamond and Moissanite and Cubic Zirconia, as they’re made of different materials. Lab-grown diamonds aren’t different (unless of course you’re exceptionally discerning like me and my good luck).

People often argue that lab-grown diamonds have no resale value, while real diamonds do and therefore make a better investment. Both points are correct-ish.

Jewelry designer and manufacturer David Stanton of Stanton Kingdom, who works with both natural and lab-grown diamonds, has a more pragmatic take on it. Diamonds were never meant to be a financial investment, but a personal one. They never retained their investment value the way people think they do, especially in today’s market. If someone buys a $250,000 diamond as an investment and decides to sell it five minutes later, he’ll be selling it at a 20 percent loss, which amounts to losing at least $50,000. (If you want a solid investment, says Stanton, buy a gold bar; that’s something that has a globally fixed market price.)

He says to look at diamonds as a piece of jewelry, with the beauty and sentiment that comes with it — not as an investment. According to that thinking, then, if you no longer want your lab-grown diamond piece of jewelry, you’re only out the cost of the piece, which is a smaller amount.

This is all nice and interesting, but what are the women who are on the potential receiving end of a diamond thinking? Rivky Fleishman of Chloe Jewels sells lab-grown diamonds exclusively, and when I asked her about the people’s attitude toward lab-grown diamonds, she responded, “I can’t answer an emotionally driven question with logic.”

I spoke to a bunch of recent kallahs, newlyweds, and single women to get their take on lab-grown. Many said a natural stone is a must for an engagement ring, but lab-grown is okay for the other jewelry. Others insisted on natural all the way. “I don’t know,” one of them told me, “lab is just fake to me.”

On the other hand, I know a woman who got married in her early 30s. When she got engaged, she told her chassan, “I’m too old to have a tiny stone, and you can’t afford a natural one in the size I want, so please buy a lab-grown diamond.” He did, and she’s thrilled.

Other women request labs because they know their in-laws can’t really afford a natural, and they don’t care enough either way.

I spoke to a mother and daughter; the daughter is engaged. The mother was happy with any diamond. “Who says no to a diamond?” she asked. Her daughter was set on natural, and when I asked her why, she couldn’t articulate it past that “it’s real.”

A friend who’s marrying off her son shared, “I got my kallah a lab. Have you seen the price difference? My teenage nieces were horrified at the idea — I don’t know which adult conversations they’ve been listening to — but this generation has taken a gift and turned it into something to be embarrassed of, and that’s a shame.”

I asked my grandmother what she would buy if she were marrying off her sons now. I explained the chemical difference — none, and the price difference — a chasm. “I’d buy real,” she said firmly. “Real is real.”

David Stanton takes issue with the “it’s natural” attitude. He contends that a rough ten-carat diamond straight out of the earth put on the street would be ignored by everyone, unless a gemologist walked past it, while a tiny diamond left on the road would be seen by all because of the refracted light. It’s all in the cut, and the cut is man-made. “Most people think the diamond’s beauty is in its nature. ‘It’s from the Earth.’ ‘It’s beautiful.’ It’s not,” David asserted. “It’s the brilliance. It’s the fire. It’s the scintillation. It’s how light refracts through a diamond as opposed to how it refracts through glass. It’s man-crafted beauty.”

Impact on the Market

With lab-grown diamonds mixed into the engagement rings lot, interesting things are happening.

People buy lab-grown for one of two reasons. One, it’s way cheaper and budgets are real things. Two, they want bigger stones, and the natural equivalent of a $2,000 lab-grown stone can cost $20,000. Combine the two reasons and you have people with small budgets who can suddenly afford something way out of their range. So the standard diamond has gotten bigger.

Myra says a carat used to be the norm in an engagement ring, and now it’s been pushed up to 1.3, 1.4 carat. Some people are paying for that size in natural diamonds, so they’re not getting a discount, but it’s the new respectable “normal,” so they don’t feel like they have a choice. She had a chassan who came in to her store and said, “I’m buying a 1.5 carat stone.” Most people don’t come in with such certainty, so she asked him why.

“It’s all I can afford,” he answered.

Myra told him that he could get a lot more with lab-grown, explaining the differences between the two. “Okay, let’s do a four-carat diamond!” the chassan said.

Myra laughed and told him to have a discussion with his mother and kallah. In the end, he bought a two-carat lab-grown diamond for his kallah. This girl now has a two-carat diamond, previously a size that was seen only on wealthy people or women who were married many years and upgraded their stones. This leads those who “earned” their diamonds by wealth or years to upgrade their stones further. We used to have markers of age-appropriateness for diamonds. We’ve completely lost that.

Case in point, David says he works with a lot of diamond rings — not kallahs, but women who are married a few years come in to upgrade their stones to much larger labs.

This gets at one of the major reasons we wear diamonds — social status. We have conversations with diamonds every day without saying a word. When you see a kallah with a particularly large stone, you think her in-laws are doing nicely. When you see a woman with large diamonds in her earrings and necklace, you think, her husband’s doing well. We use diamonds to project worth. Are you a woman worth spending $15,000 on?

When lab-grown diamonds are thrown into the mix, it disrupts the message. A diamond was valuable because it was expensive. Now that it’s not, or you don’t know if it is or isn’t, the message isn’t clear. People of wealth are looking for other ways to project their status and worth, whether it’s through designer jewelry — so everyone knows the price — or other luxury items. (As an aside, I wonder if more artistic pieces will come back now that diamonds themselves don’t signify value. Tennis anything always bored me. What’s so interesting about a row of diamonds — especially now that it’s cheap?)

I dunno, if the diamond is losing its symbolism, why should I buy one to represent my marriage? Then again, kallahs in Monroe have been getting CZs for years and the fact that it’s not real doesn’t stop it symbolizing an engagement. Am I faulty in thinking that the object representing my marriage needs to be expensive or rare? If I got a different object, or even a different stone, for example, an emerald instead of a diamond, would that suffice?

Perhaps the only value diamonds have these days is that they’re shiny and pretty. Humans have been drawn to glittering objects for time immemorial. Just think of Moshe Rabbeinu as a child set before a glowing coal and glimmering gold — the test was if he’d go for shiny or if he knew the object’s value.

David Stanton agrees with the idea I posited and says that “The future of jewelry is custom.” He says the investment and status value is gone, but the true value of a diamond lies in its beauty and in the meaning behind it, not in its raw materials.

“Whatever someone can purchase with natural in their budget, objectively speaking, opting for lab would give them something significantly more beautiful,” David observes. The story behind a piece carries meaning to the individual who wears it, giving it inherent value, like a husband gifting his wife a necklace with 30 diamonds for a 30th anniversary. Another example David offered is Cartier’ s Love Bracelet — it requires another person to put it on and take off, symbolizing a relationship — which is still popular even though it debuted in 1969.

David is primarily a designer, so he has no product to push but the client’s desires — for him it makes no difference if people choose lab over natural. However, lab diamonds give him much more creative freedom. Because the stones are so much cheaper, he can use a lot more, and in many more sizes. What would be cost-prohibitive in natural is a creative playground in lab-grown.

All the jewelers I spoke to conceded that natural diamonds’ value has fallen significantly over the past two years. But there’s confidence that natural diamonds will always have a place, and maybe even make a comeback. As one jeweler said, “the Royals don’t wear lab-grown.”

She’s right, they don’t. It’s below their dignity. And for a lot of people, that’s what will draw them to natural diamonds. Who knows, maybe smaller diamonds will start being a marker of being natural and people will eschew the larger ones? (I know, I’m daydreaming.)

Where does this leave me? More ambivalent than before. The value of jewelry has been completely lost to me, other than that it’s pretty and shiny and accessorizes well. All its subliminal messaging is lost with lab-grown gems flooding the market. Why wear anything?

When I said this to Devorah, she didn’t buy it. “The Torah talks about Eliezer bringing jewelry for Rivkah, it’s a real inyan.” She had a point. And jewelry is that pretty. So don’t judge me (or ask me any questions!) if you see me sporting a rock on a finger one day.

What’s in a Diamond – Grading

Diamonds are judged by four characteristics, known as the four Cs: Carat, Color, Cut, Clarity.

Carat refers to size. Color is how white the diamond is. The highest grade is D. Cut is how well the diamond cutter did their job: Is it symmetrical, are the facets done with precision, etc. Clarity is the number of inclusions (a.k.a. flaws) a diamond has. The highest grade is flawless, but that’s incredibly rare. The grading then goes by how many inclusions the diamond has and how they’re seen — is a loupe needed, or is it visible to the naked eye?

A diamond’s value depends on the score in each category.

Tricks of the Trade

How to to tell a natural diamond from a lab-grown

A Jewelers Loupe: Certified diamonds will have a number lasered into the girdle of the diamond, or the words “Lab Grown” or similar verbiage. You’ll need a jeweler’s loupe to find it.

UV Light: Natural diamonds have fluorescence in them which come from trace elements like nitrogen which a diamond absorbed while underground. To activate the fluorescence, shine a UV light it. If it looks blue, it’s usually natural. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a quick test that can be done on multiple diamonds at a time (think jewelers taking delivery on baggies filled with diamonds — that’s literally how they come).

Certification: Starting at around .25 carats, diamonds are certified. A certificate will indicate the diamond’s origins.

Specialized Equipment: Jewelers can use a machine that test the way the diamond reacts to light, what happens when the light is removed, etc. Natural diamonds will react differently than lab-grown diamonds.

How Lab-Grown Diamonds are Made

There are two methods to the madness:

The High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) and the newcomer, Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD).

HPHT is exactly like its name. They take a diamond seed, which is a tiny diamond sliver, and put it in a container with carbon and a metal catalyst. They pump up the temperature and pressure to around 1300-1600 degrees Fahrenheit and over 870,000 pounds per square inch (PSI) of pressure. This causes the carbon to dissolve into the molten metal catalyst and then crystalize around the side, causing it to grow and become a larger diamond.

CVD starts with the same diamond seed. It’s placed in a vacuum-sealed container where they add in carbon-rich gases. The process causes the gases to ionize and break apart (don’t make me explain — you learned this in 11th-grade chemistry) and it crystallizes around the diamond seed, adding on to it layer by layer — similar to a pearl.

There’s a lot of variation in the quality of the diamonds produced, depending on how long the diamond is left to incubate, the conditions of the process, etc. Not all lab-grown diamonds are made equally.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 973)