Understanding the relationship between design, material, and how you expect to wear your piece are all key. It may seem like a lot, but we’ve compiled great resources to provide you a holistic approach to custom jewelry design:

• Diamond Quality and Sizing
• Design Guide: Materials and Construction
• Approaching Lab Grown Diamonds

We call it the Diamond Difference.

It may seem counterintuitive, but the way we do this is by not listing any individual diamonds on our site. The reason? Retailer control. To maximize margins, retailers negotiate restrictive listing agreements—restricting suppliers from listing diamonds with any other retailer. 

Never fear, nearly every single one of these diamonds is readily available for wholesale purchase within the jewelry industry. That’s where we come in. 

Using our decades of experience, we apply proprietary parameters and algorithms, through our patented Diamond Matrix, to analyze all available diamonds on a regular basis. We instantaneously narrow the wide pool of possible diamonds to the select few that meet our standards, and in doing so we find diamonds that present exceptional value for you. 

We stand behind our methodology by guaranteeing that we will match or exceed the quality characteristics of our diamond estimates while also working to come in under budget. You will never pay more than our estimate, even when the diamond we find for you is bigger, better graded, or both!

Because they are the shape with the most consistent value and availability.

Diamonds don’t start out how we are familiar with them, polished and sparkly. They are first mined in hunks called rough. When a diamond cutter is working with a piece of rough, their goal is to maximize the yield, the amount of stones and overall carat weight that can be extracted from the piece. Most rough yield can be maximized by predominantly cutting Round diamonds. The rough better suited to maximize yield for other shapes, called Fancy Cuts, is less common, and as such, Fancy Cuts are less likely to be cut.

Because there are more round diamonds on the market than any other shape, there is greater volume of options across all size and quality combinations.

As we expand we expect to be able to integrate other shapes into our proprietary search, and can always work with other shapes in individual pieces including our bespoke designs.

Yes, lab grown diamonds are real diamonds. There is a great deal of wariness around lab grown diamonds due to the history and marketing of much cheaper, similar looking man-made stones, such as cubic zirconia and moissanite. These stones are not diamonds but instead, diamond simulants. They fall short of the 2 main attributes of a diamond, hardness and brilliance, which are what make a diamond so unique and valuable, as well as keenly suited for a timeless and cherished item like an engagement ring.

Unlike simulants that approximate a diamond, lab grown diamonds look and behave like natural diamonds because they are the result of conditions that create diamonds, and are molecularly the same, it’s just that humans bring about the circumstances for those conditions instead of them arising naturally.

There are 2 types of lab grown diamonds:

HPHT – Standing for High Pressure, High Temperature the process is just what the name lays out. Carbon is placed under extremely high pressure at high temperatures, which is the same circumstance that can occur naturally and result in natural diamonds.

CVD – Standing for Chemical Vapor Deposition, the name is less straight-forward but the process is equally comprehensible. The use of gas and high but relatively moderate temperatures, compared to HPHT, are applied to carbon in a vacuum leading to crystallization of the gas that forms the diamond.

Both forms of lab grown diamonds require specialized equipment, typically only available to diamond grading labs, to be able to discern that they are lab grown instead of natural. Lab grown diamonds are graded in the same way as natural diamonds, and as such we apply our same quality standards to them.

While lab grown diamonds are real diamonds, they lack one element compared to their natural counterparts – scarcity.

The amount of time for a natural diamond to be created numbers into the millions of years, so it is broadly considered that the supply of natural diamonds on our planet is finite. Along with this, the level of investment needed to mine diamonds at a sustainable scale is exceptionally high, limiting the amount of diamond mining companies.

The technology behind lab grown diamonds is continuously being refined, costs lowered, and the output time shortened. So while there are costs, both financial and ecological including the immense usage of electricity and developing the facilities to grow them, the cost to grow diamonds is continuously going down. The barrier to market entry is far lower than trying to establish a diamond mine. As such, there are many more companies growing diamonds than mining them, with more lab grown diamond companies starting each day, increasing both competition and supply.

Lab grown diamonds are already significantly cheaper than natural diamonds, and because there is no finite limitation to them, it is entirely possible that their prices continue to drop. Click here to read our guide to deciding if a Lab grown diamond is right for you.

The long-term effect of lab grown diamonds remains to be seen, but because gemological grading labs have the ability to distinguish lab grown and natural diamonds, it is likely that the value of natural diamonds remain independent from lab grown diamonds.

While there is no functional or physical difference between lab grown and natural diamonds, as long as there is a way to differentiate the two, even if the availability of such a test is limited, natural diamonds will be considered finite and scarce, while lab grown diamonds will not.

What remains to be seen is just how saturated the lab grown market becomes, and if any further development occurs on how they are grown that may eliminate the viability of the existing tests that can distinguish natural and lab grown diamonds.

It is common to use slightly lower quality diamonds for earrings and pendants because of how they are worn compared to diamonds used in an engagement ring. We lower our Color and Clarity grade requirements each by 1 grade when sourcing for earrings and pendants. We do not drop our requirement of every diamond being an Excellent Cut. So we consider diamonds that are I-Color and SI-1 Clarity or better, and we still always provide a GIA grading report. Because the settings for these earrings and pendants are not as elevated as a ring’s setting, and because of where they are worn, less light passes through. In effect there’s no reason to pay extra for the added quality unless you specifically want it. That being said, it’s still important to maintain high quality standards. Dropping below I-Color and SI-1 Clarity, the diamonds begin to become visibly yellow with imperfections noticeable to the naked eye. If you are considering purchasing a diamond(s) J-Color and SI-2 Clarity or lower, we recommend seeing the stones in person to make sure it meets your expectations.