There's a lot of noise about lab-grown diamonds online. Some of it helpful, most of it loud, almost all of it sold to you by someone with a side to take.
We don't have one. Stara Designs is a bespoke jewellery atelier in Kelowna, BC. Our founder, Dev, grew up in Surat — the city in India where roughly nine in every ten of the world's diamonds are cut and polished. His family has been in the diamond trade for over forty years, working with both lab-grown and natural stones every day. So this is the version of the conversation we have with clients in the studio, written down. No marketing department. No spin.
So, are they real diamonds?
Yes. Same carbon, same crystal lattice, same hardness, same brilliance. Tested at any major gemmological lab — GIA, IGI — a lab-grown diamond reads as diamond, because that's what it is. The certificate will say "lab-grown" because Google, regulators, and your future self all deserve to know how the stone was made. But the stone itself is the real thing.
The US Federal Trade Commission settled this in 2018. They removed the word "natural" from the official definition of a diamond. A diamond is a diamond — born underground over a billion years, or grown in a chamber the size of a microwave over a few weeks.
How they're made (the two-minute version)
Two ways, both copying what the earth does — just faster.
HPHT (High Pressure, High Temperature) presses carbon at extreme heat and pressure until it crystallises onto a tiny diamond seed. Think of it as bullying carbon into being a diamond, the way the earth's mantle does over geological time.
CVD (Chemical Vapour Deposition) heats methane gas in a vacuum chamber until carbon atoms fall out and settle, layer by layer, onto a diamond seed. Less brute force, more chemistry-set patience.
Both take about eight to twelve weeks. Both produce real diamonds. Most lab-grown today is CVD — it scales better.
The part everyone really wants to know — the price
Lab-grown diamond prices have collapsed. In 2018, a 1-carat lab-grown cost around 30% less than its natural counterpart. Today? Roughly 73% less. Same colour grade, same clarity, same cut. A fraction of the price.
What that means in practice: the engagement ring budget that bought a 1-carat natural diamond five years ago will now buy you a 2.5- to 3-carat lab-grown stone of equal or better grade. Larger, brighter, cleaner — for the same money.
Why the drop? Production scaled faster than demand, the technology got cheaper, and buyers stopped asking "is this real?" and started asking "why is the natural one so expensive?" Once that question gets asked out loud, the market shifts.
What we won't tell you is that lab-grown diamonds are an investment. They aren't. Neither are natural diamonds, despite what the industry told everyone for seventy years. Any consumer diamond — lab or natural — resells for 20–40% of what you paid. Buy the stone for the piece. Not the spreadsheet.
Where lab-grown wins
Size and quality become accessible. Better cuts, higher colours (D-E-F instead of I-J), cleaner clarities (VS1-VVS2 instead of SI) — without the budget gymnastics. The grade tiers most buyers couldn't afford in natural become the affordable middle of the lab-grown market.
No provenance question. The supply chain is short and traceable. No conflict-zone anxiety, no carbon-heavy mining. For a lot of our younger clients, that's the part they care about.
Consistency. Each stone is still graded individually, but production produces fewer wild swings than nature does. Ask for a 2-carat oval, D-VS1 — your jeweller can find it quickly, and it'll look the way you expect.
Where natural still earns its place
We work with both. Natural still wins in three situations.
The story. A natural diamond formed before any of us existed. For some people, that geological romance is the point. Lab-grown can't replicate it, and shouldn't try.
Heirloom intention. If the piece is meant to pass down for generations and the stone's provenance is part of the gift, natural carries that weight in a way lab-grown doesn't.
Exceptional stones. Vivid fancy yellows, blues, pinks, large flawless whites — the absolute top of the market still belongs to natural.
How to actually choose
We ask one question in the studio: what do you want this piece to do?
If the answer is "I want the biggest, brightest stone my budget can support, on the hand of someone I love," lab-grown is almost always the call. You'll get more diamond, better grade, for less money. Full stop.
If the answer is "the natural origin is part of what I'm giving — the billion years, the story," go natural.
If you're not sure — that's the most common starting point — come in. We work with both every day. We'll talk through what the piece is meant to mean, and the answer usually picks itself.
A note on what's possible
Most jewellers offer about ten standard diamond shapes — round, oval, emerald, the usual set. We offer those too, but we also cut diamonds in over 100 custom cuts and shapes, in both lab-grown and natural. Same applies to coloured gemstones — lab or natural, bespoke-cut to your design. If you've ever sketched a ring around a shape that doesn't exist in catalogues, that's a conversation we love having.
How Stara approaches it
Every piece starts with the same question: what do you want this to mean? Once we know, the stone comes first. The design is drawn around it — CAD-rendered for your approval before any deposit, set into precious metals such as gold and platinum, crafted by craftsmen with decades of experience, and finished in three to four weeks.
If you'd like to see lab-grown diamonds in person at our Kelowna studio, you're welcome to visit. For natural diamonds, coloured gemstones, or bespoke pieces — we source to your specifications, share the certificate and high-resolution video for your approval, and design from there.
Whichever way you choose, the piece will outlive the trend. That's the part we care most about.
Your story, set in stone.
Picture Credit: GIA Education