Find your perfect lab-diamond.

Carat

Carat is simply a measure of weight, like kilogram and pounds, used in the jewellery industry. 

It’s as simple as – 1,00 Gram = 5,00 ct (carats).

As the weight of diamond increases, its price per carat increases.  

Importance of weight

There’s no way around it. Close to every single diamond engagement ring design ever imagined looks better with a larger diamond. 

It matters.

That’s why most of the diamond ring designs you find online and in print advertising are displayed with a beyond-average size centre diamond to make the design look as impressive as possible.

Laboratory-made diamonds should cost around a third of a similar specification natural diamond. This significantly lower floor price makes larger diamonds accessible across the board. 

That’s a major draw for an ever-growing slice of the laboratory-grown diamond jewellery market. 

For any given budget, you can significantly increase the size without breaking the bank when opting for a lab-grown diamond. 

Color

A diamond’s colour grade indicates how white or tinted in color a diamond is. 

Using the common alphabet the colour range starts at D which is perfectly colourless, and tinkers down to Z which is prominently tinted in color. 

As you move from one letter to the next the prominence of the color tint very slightly intensifies.

In mined diamonds, the hue of color is typically a shade of brown or yellow. Laboratory diamonds err in favor of a blue undertone in about a third of gems. When considering diamonds in the colour range G-I, I recommend taking a look at the individual HD videos provided on all diamond pages. D-E-F laboratory diamonds will always appear white in an engagement ring. 

Although not as dramatic as carat; the higher the colour, the rarer the diamond and the steeper the price. 

When diamonds are made in a laboratory, the colour can be controlled to a certain extent, and as you would expect, laboratories focus on creating high-end, strikingly white diamonds. 

The bulk of laboratory-made diamonds sold in the jewellery market are desirable top-tier colours typically in the D – E – F – G – H colour range.

That’s without a doubt whiter than your average run-of-the-mill natural diamond colours you find in mined diamond engagement rings. 

Cut 

Diamond cut is often confused with the diamond shape (Round, oval, square). You’ll find some jewellers that don’t even know the difference. 

But at least you do, now. 

The Cut grade refers to how well a diamond was cut and polished from uncut/rough to maximise its characteristic life, sparkle and brilliance. 

A diamond has very special light reflection and refraction characteristics. You can think of a diamond’s facets (sides) as internal mirrors that reflect light internally to and from the diamond’s environment.

To optimise this light show – the ideal angles, dimensions, and proportions of every facet have been scientifically determined. During grading a diamond is 3D scanned and compared to this benchmark range of values.

If the diamond has been poorly made the size, clarity and colour don’t matter… You’re stuck with what looks like a dull piece of glass.

In the world of naturally formed diamonds, the GIA is the benchmark of truthful, consistent third-party diamond grading. They developed the popular 5-tier scale to grade a diamond’s cut grade;

• Excellent:  Optimal light reflection and refraction.
• Very Good: Very close to perfect – mostly indistinguishable from Excellent cut unless you know your diamond very well.
• Good: Some look nice, most don’t. Not recommended. 
• Fair: Not recommended. 
• Poor: Not recommended. 

Currently, the vast majority of laboratory-made diamonds are graded by the IGI which does a great job but uses a slightly different cut grading system. 

I don’t think it’s more than linguistics in an effort to differentiate themselves. 

Where GIA’s top cut tier is Excellent, the IGI adds a tier above that called “Ideal”.

In my opinion, it’s not superior to the Excellent cut as defined and issued by the GIA. 

Whether you opt for GIA’s Excellent, or IGI’s Excellent or Ideal cut – you’re buying the cream of the crop. 

Clarity 

The clarity grade is a measure of the pureness of a diamond. 

Both natural and laboratory-made diamonds do have certain inclusions/imperfections in them.

Inclusions vary greatly in type, severity, color and location. 

These range from benign minuscule white spots to cracks that severely compromise the strength of a diamond. And everything in between. 

These inclusions leave every diamond with its own unique fingerprint. 

The clarity grade is determined by a gemologist viewing and judging the type, location and amount of inclusions visible in a diamond at 10X magnification. 

They’re not graded by the naked eye and often these inclusions are impossible to spot without magnification. 

After inspection the gemologist issues a clarity grade based on what they saw; 

• Internally Flawless: No visible Impurities under 10X magnification
• VVS: Very, very small inclusions barely visible under 10X magnification
• VS: Very small inclusions visible under 10X magnification. 
• SI: Small inclusions that might be visible to the naked eye. 
• I: Very obviously included to the naked eye. 

Eye-clean is all you need. 

87% of women polled have a strong preference for diamonds free from any visible inclusions to the naked eye.

That doesn’t mean the diamond should be internally flawless. 

Without magnification VS2-clarity and higher is usually flawless to the naked eye and all you need to ensure your laboratory-grown engagement ring is absolutely blemish-free.  

Rather increase the size of your main diamond than max out clarities beyond what your eye can see. 

*For sizes over 2,00ct, VVS2 and higher might be the safer bet. 

As with color, diamond growing laboratories focus on creating diamonds that are at the upper end of the clarity grading scale and the vast majority are of higher clarity than the vast amount of natural diamonds you’ll find on the market and jewelry circuit.