Jewelry Care 101: Keeping Your Treasures Shining
5 Reasons to Choose a Lab-Grown Diamond Engagement Ring
When choosing engagement rings, couples decide on options like gemstone type, colour, cut, size, shape, and number of carats. These days, a new feature is trending – lab-grown gemstones. Chances are that you’ve heard about these gemstones and how they are a great choice. While lab-grown diamonds are trending as engagement rings, it is important to know what makes them so special.
You may be concerned if going for a lab-grown engagement ring is a great choice. This article seeks to provide answers to all of these questions by providing you with 5 reasons why you should choose a lab-grown diamond as an engagement ring.
1. Lower Cost Compared to Natural Gemstones
According to Knot’s Jewellery and Engagement Study, the average cost of an engagement ring as of 2021 is $6,000. Most mined diamond rings cost between $1,000 and $7,000. A one-carat mined diamond generally costs between $2,000 and $16,000.
In contrast, the average cost for a lab-grown diamond engagement ring is about $800 to $1,000 per carat. Usually, lab-grown diamonds cost 20 to 40% less than natural diamonds. The price margin may even be higher depending on other factors such as carat size, cut, shape, and the manufacturer.
The good thing about lab diamonds is that they are more affordable and offer the same quality as mined ones. You could consider purchasing a lab-grown diamond engagement ring as obtaining a bonus on a natural diamond of similar cut, carat size, and shape.
Do not be tempted to think lab-grown diamonds are fake or substandard products because they are cheaper. Later on in this article, you will discover how lab-grown diamonds are produced and what makes them of exact quality to natural ones.
2. Ethical and Eco-Friendly
Beautiful as they appear, mined diamonds are rendering quite an amount of harm to the environment. Mining is a non-environmental-friendly process, causing significant damages like carbon emission, deforestation, and land destruction. Maybe you should also consider purchasing a sustainable pre-owned engagement ring to help out reduce the need for mining diamonds since most diamonds nowadays are already lab-grown.
Miners use heavy machinery and explosives that distort the landscape and displace the natural habitat. Run-offs from mines cause water and land pollution, while the changes in the earth’s structure cause erosion and landslides. Moreover, mining consumes lots of energy and, in turn, causes dangerous carbon emissions and the release of other harmful gases like sulphur oxide.
Lab-grown diamonds hardly present us with any of these issues. They are manufactured straight from the labs and therefore cause no structural impacts on the earth’s landscape. Lab diamonds produce less carbon emission and no sulphur oxide. The energy consumed in the manufacturing of lab-created diamonds is also far less and can be renewed.
Meanwhile, producing gemstones in laboratories eliminates land clashes and forced labour, while significantly reducing cases of smuggling and unauthorized mining. It is apparent that lab-grown diamonds do better at being environmental-friendly than natural diamonds.
3. Look the Same
Although natural and lab-created white diamonds differ in how they are sourced, they are essentially the same. The chances are that you have encountered a lab-grown diamond ring before without even realizing it.
Lab-grown diamonds are manufactured by imitating processes that occur within the earth to form natural diamonds. The procedure also uses exact manufacturing materials, which are carbon and the right amount of temperature and pressure. The result is a lab-grown diamond has the same chemical structure as a mined one, which makes them exhibit the same physical, chemical, and optical characteristics.
Think of all the properties of natural diamonds you know; lab-manufactured diamonds would offer you the same. In fact, they can be better at exhibiting these qualities because of the intentionality with which they are produced. You cannot differentiate between lab-grown and natural diamonds by the naked eye. Jewellery experts use sophisticated means to determine if a diamond is sourced from the earth or produced in a lab.
As you proudly wear your diamond ring, no one would be able to detect how it is sourced just by looking at it, except, of course, you inform them.
They look the same. Photo from Adobe Stock
4. Fashionable and Unique
In a world of trends, lab-grown diamonds are the next trendy thing. You could wear an additional level of pride just by knowing that you’re putting on ethically sourced jewellery. You could even show it off to your friends and encourage them to become conscious consumers like you.
On the other hand, we all already appreciate the prestige associated with wearing a diamond. But often, they come at prices that are way off the budget. Because of this, many settle for diamond engagement rings or lower carat than they would have preferred. Many even fall victim to purchasing fake rings in a bid to purchase affordable jewellery.
A lab-grown diamond engagement ring easily offers you the style you desire coupled with affordability. Depending on your budget, you would be able to purchase the carat size of your choice or even go a size higher. Lab-grown diamonds provide you with unlimited options in size, shape, cut, and colour. With improved manufacturing procedures, it’s easy to hop on any trend in the choice of diamond shape, colour, and cut.
5. The Future of Diamonds
While natural diamonds have built cultural and sentimental attachments from most jewellery lovers, we cannot deny the apparent concerns associated with mining and processing them. Asides from environmental concerns, there are other ethical issues associated with mining, such as forced labour, land clashes, unauthorized mining, and smuggling. Manufacturing diamonds in labs limits the occurrence of unfair practices that risk safety and health or violate fundamental human rights.
People are now more environmentally conscious than ever before and would not purchase any product that does the environment more harm than good. Consumers are also concerned about how products are manufactured and are often curious about the welfare of workers and the quality of the work environment.
This is why manufacturers have also been more intentional about how they source and process their products. Of course, choosing environmental sustainability goes beyond a marketing tactic; it ensures the safety of the immediate environment, the workplace, industry workers, and the world we live in.
Lab-grown diamonds are the future of diamonds. Already, there is a drift from the promotion of mined jewellery to their lab-grown counterparts. Without a doubt, the margin of this shift is bound to get wider as the years go by.
Check out this ABC News video where Ines de La Cuetara reports on the world’s largest jeweler, Pandora, saying it will only sell lab-created diamonds, as the man-made gems become more popular:
Conclusion
With lab-grown diamonds, it is not a question of quality but choice. While everyone is entitled to make a choice, it is most important to make choices that are clean, ethical, and promote environmental safety without compromising style and affordability.
Although several products are out there touted as real diamonds, even when they are fake, a lab-grown diamond with proper certification is the real deal. Now that you are ready to get an engagement ring, it is time to shop with pride and a sense of environmental consciousness.
