Gen Z Can’t Stop Buying Lab-Grown Diamonds

About a couple months ago, when my boyfriend broached the subject of engagement rings, he asked me, “Do you want a natural diamond or a lab-grown one?” My original inclination was to say a natural one, but I had no idea why when I understood that both, on an intrinsic level, were essentially the same. They’re both diamonds in look, feel, and composition.

A lab-grown diamond, for all intents and purposes, is no different from one that’s natural or mined, other than the fact that it was birthed in a lab — and not the Earth. That doesn’t make it less real or less of a diamond. In fact, to the naked, untrained eye, the difference is virtually indiscernible. Jennie Yoon, the founder of fine jewelry brand Kinn, likes to compare it with a man-made lake versus a lake made by Mother Nature. “The body of the water is exactly the same,” she says. “It’s just who made it that’s different.”

Also different: The enormous disparity in cost between the two. At a cursory glance, a 3-carat, top-tier natural diamond with superior cut, color, and clarity could easily cost at least $60,000. A lab-made diamond with similar specs? $3,000. Cost may not necessarily be the only driving factor, but it plays a major role in the decision-making process for couples who are getting engaged today, especially among Gen Z. This was certainly the case for Nadya Okamoto, the founder of sustainable period products brand August and social entrepreneur.

“I didn’t think I wanted a big ring. I was like, ‘Oh, I want to be humble, not in your face.’ But once we went ring shopping, I was like, ‘No, I want a big kahuna.’ In the world of social media, size matters a lot more. In a video online, you can’t tell what the cut or clarity is — all you can evaluate is size and how it looks,” says the 27-year-old social entrepreneur and content creator, who shared her 4.7-carat elongated cushion from Brilliant Earth to her 5 million followers on Instagram and TikTok. “I tried on a natural that was $140,000, but when you go grown, it’s $20K for the same size. I realized, if you showed me a natural versus a lab, I couldn’t tell you the difference.”

And it seems as though everyone has an opinion. A recently engaged friend of mine went for a 3-carat lab-grown diamond. “All my friends who got engaged years ago all wanted one from a brand, from Tiffany or De Beers or Harry Winston, so they have these super-expensive 1-carat rings,” she told me. “But no one’s going to know they’re designer — all people will see is a 1-carat diamond.”

Another friend said that when she gets engaged, she wanted lab — a big Barbie-pink rock: “I won’t be able to find something like that with a natural diamond.”

Another said she didn’t care if it was lab. “Then I could have multiple different engagement rings,” she said emphatically. “One for every mood or outfit.”

My boyfriend told me that his friend gave his girlfriend a choice: She could choose an engagement ring with a natural diamond or a lab-grown diamond plus a Rolex. She chose the latter.

The common thread here was that everyone I talked to overwhelmingly fell in the lab-grown diamond camp. It’s a small sampling, yes, but it serves as a larger indicator of the direction the market is heading.

“I think older generations saw luxury as something that’s scarce, something that’s one-of-a-kind, and a lot of luxury brands still play into that, but I don’t think the modern generation sees luxury in that form anymore,” says Yoon, who originally launched Vow, the engagement line of Kinn, three years ago, with only natural diamonds. As of a year ago, she now offers lab-grown diamonds across her brand. “Now, it’s all about the meaning and what you prioritize, whether it’s the size, the clarity, the design, or the cost — and that should help determine lab versus natural. It’s all about the perceived value — what’s valuable to you.”

Yoon remembers how people compared lab diamonds with a fake Chanel bag versus a real one. “But that’s not the comparison because a lab isn’t fake,” she recalls saying. “People are shifting that mentality — that stigma is going away.”

Michael Pollak, co-founder and CEO of lab-grown diamond jewelry brand Grwn, saw the lab-grown diamond market gain traction in the United States about seven years ago. Lab diamonds were first developed in 1954 by General Electric purely for industrial use. By the 2010s, lab-grown diamonds were distributed as loose stones and jewelry in the United States, along with an influx of new jewelry brands that revolve around lab-grown diamonds, like MiaDonna, Vrai, Brilliant Earth, and Holden. But Pollak says that it wasn’t until 2020, when the Federal Trade Commission ruled that lab-grown diamonds were, in fact, real diamonds — and not synthetic — that the industry really started seeing a shift.

“As of a couple of years ago, [of] the engagement-ring business, which is just one part of the lab-grown diamond business, more than 50% of purchases were lab-grown versus traditionally mined diamonds, and it’s caused a huge disruption in the jewelry industry,” says Pollak, who before Grwn was at the helm of an engagement-ring jewelry brand called Engage that started with an inventory of 50% mined diamonds and 50% lab grown. Within a year, it had converted the entire inventory to lab grown. “When a consumer can buy a 3- or 4-carat lab-grown for the price of a 1-carat mined, that’s very, very compelling. Lab grown has better value, yes, but there are also a lot of ecological and sustainable reasons that better align with people’s values.”

Mined diamonds have long held a bad rap for not only destroying the environment or permanently harming ecosystems (see: the Mir mine in Russia), but also for exploiting children to excavate those gems. Even with the Kimberley process, a certification to ostensibly end conflict diamonds, there’s no guarantee that no one was harmed at any step in the process. But with lab-grown diamonds, the issue of “conflict” or “blood diamonds” ceases to exist. Plus, with closed-loop factories, or solar-powered farms (Grwn’s lab-grown diamonds are made in a 115-acre solar farm in Surat, India, for example), lab-grown diamonds are obviously the most sustainable option. And while there are ethical and human rights concerns with lab-grown diamonds (factory conditions, fair wages), there are also organizations that monitor and certify labor practices, like the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC) or the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

This desire for transparency, for something that’s sustainably and ethically sourced, is becoming increasingly paramount for consumers. “I’m very vocal about sustainability — I run a sustainable period care brand,” says Okamoto on what inevitably drove her decision to opt for a lab diamond. “When I started posting about going ring shopping, there were so many comments that were like, ‘Girl, don’t get a blood diamond.’ So, it [came] from a values perspective and also a reputational standpoint — it would be a concern and contradictory to not choose the most sustainable option.”

As lab-grown diamonds flood the market, and with more jewelry brands — and more consumers — embracing them, the value of natural diamonds continues to decrease. “The mined diamond market, depending on the quality and size, has dropped anywhere from 30% to 50% in value,” Pollak says. “Some people are embracing it; some people are very fearful of it.”

Caitlin Mociun, the designer and founder of fine-jewelry brand Mociun who prides herself on designing unique, custom pieces, adamantly refuses to work with lab. “I feel like a business has to choose which way they want to go,” says the Mociun, who delights in finding rare antique cuts or special unusual gemstones, like bicolor sapphires or old diamonds with a long history. “To me, if you’re going to work with lab-grown diamonds, then why won’t you work with other lab-created gemstones, and it opens up this whole world that I wouldn’t consider fine or high jewelry. Diamonds that come out of the Earth hold an incredible energy, and I don’t feel anything from [lab-]grown diamonds.”

She admits to panicking at first: What if the diamond market went the same way as pearls? She tells the story of how pearls were the most expensive, the most exceptional stone, so much so that Pierre Cartier purchased Cartier’s Fifth Avenue Mansion with a single natural pearl necklace in 1917. But after Kokichi Mikimoto created the first cultured pearl, the pearl market has never been the same since. “Natural pearls are still more expensive and there are still pearls that can’t be cultivated, but your average white round pearl can be cultivated, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who would spend the money on a natural pearl,” Mociun says. “So I freaked out. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, the same thing that happened to pearls is going to happen to diamonds.’ So, what’s going to happen in the future? It’s very possible that diamonds will become far less valuable, but I’m not worried right now.”

For Mociun, lab is to natural as fast fashion is to high-end designer. In other words, she believes there will be a consumer base for both markets. And with the backlash against fast fashion, perhaps there might be a backlash against lab: “I feel it’s really important for me to stay in the lane that I’ve chosen for myself because I’ve always been so interested in what the Earth can naturally create,” she says. “And my work is also a little more niche. I know there are people like me who are invested in the natural diamond industry.”

One of them is the De Beers Group, which recently announced its intention to close Lightbox, its lab-grown diamond brand, effectively reinforcing its commitment to natural diamonds. And Pollak believes traditional luxury brands like Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Bulgari, Graff, Harry Winston, David Yurman, and Tiffany & Co. (though perhaps the brand might dabble in the lab-grown market in order to target a younger demographic, like its sterling silver collection) are wedded to natural diamonds. “I cannot see in any world where they’re going to change their stance in the near future — they will stay 100% in mined diamonds,” says Pollak, who estimates that around 80% of jewelers in the United States sell lab-grown pieces. “I think up until seven years ago, the average American jeweler resisted and might have felt conflicted about lab, but the consumer is demanding it.”

When Yoon first introduced lab to her consumers, she started with one piece of jewelry: the Solis ring, a Kinn bestseller, offering the same design with a half-carat lab-grown diamond at a lower price point. “It was already a bestseller, but immediately, we saw a spike in sales. It showed us that we could reach a bigger audience — a younger audience,” she says. “It’s been interesting to see that shift. Now, we offer all our bestsellers in both lab and natural, and I would say 70% of our customers choose lab. As a designer, knowing that I can work with lab diamonds, I feel like I can be more creative. I don’t have to feel so restricted, and people can enjoy diamonds more than ever. As a business that offers both, I’m definitely benefiting.”

In just a year, Yoon has seen the wholesale prices for lab-grown drop. Then, the price difference between a natural and a lab was 20%; now, she says it’s as great as 30%, sometimes 35%. She attributes the gap increase to supply and demand: More companies are supplying lab-grown diamonds, so it’s driving down the prices.

But Pollak says the market has since stabilized. He likens it to the computer manufacturing industry. “When IBM or Apple made the first computer, it was big in size and the price was very, very high, but as the industry grew, they became more efficient, computers shrank in size, and the cost also dropped,” he explains. “With lab diamonds, the equipment has improved, the cost of production has become more efficient. I don’t think lab-grown diamonds are going down further in price — because there’s the cost of equipment, of energy, of labor.”

And while the stones — whether that’s natural or lab — in a piece of jewelry might change in value, what doesn’t is the gold used for the mounting, which continues to soar. Pollak says it’s the first time in modern history that platinum is selling less than gold. Mociun calls the current state of the gold market “bonkers,” and it’s for this reason that she’s stocking up as much as she can. She’s doing the opposite with diamonds, buying small amounts at a time. “There is the worry that the market is too flooded with lab-grown diamonds — there’s so many of them and they’re so affordable — that diamonds are no longer special,” she says.

An even greater concern: that diamonds will eventually no longer be valuable. It’s true that lab-grown diamonds have no resale value — it’s an argument that Okamoto encountered from sellers who were trying to push natural over lab. For her, that was a moot point, because she wasn’t getting married with the intention of selling it.

But it’s also an argument that’s now outdated, since the future of natural diamonds is murkier than ever.

“No one wants to buy a natural diamond because no one knows how far the price will fall down — there’s still a market for it, but you’d be selling a mined diamond at a very big discount to whatever you paid for it,” says Pollak, who believes that whatever is rare and scarce will always continue to retain value. The diamond equivalent would be something extremely rare and unusual in terms of their size, their color, or their quality. “I think the diamonds that will survive will be these rare collectibles, and the rest of the market will simply get disrupted and go away.”

Whether that means the significance of the engagement will also diminish remains to be seen. Okamoto believes that over time, the traditional “diamond engagement ring” that was peddled by De Beers in the 1940s will eventually fade away — it’ll no longer be considered a luxury item. “You used to have one ring, and now you can have a whole ring stack before you get married,” she says. “I think we’re moving away from a ring being a literal symbol of love — a marker of ‘I am taken’ — because it’s archaic. In the future, anything could symbolize love. It’s up to us.”

Even if the engagement ring continues to be the norm, its inherent value should remain. Or as Yoon beautifully puts it: “It isn’t about how expensive your ring is or whether it’s natural or lab; it’s about the milestone and the celebration of the two of you.”

Mociun echoes that sentiment. “Spend what you’re comfortable spending on a ring because you can’t eat it, you can’t sleep in it. It’s not a monetary investment, but it’s not a bad investment either, because it represents something special — a union between two people and a commitment. It comes down to what feels right for you and what you find is beautiful.”