Natural and Lab-Grown Diamonds Compared

Yes. Made of carbon atoms (typically about 99.95% pure) locked into the cubic crystal structure. The hardest substance in the natural world. Formed about 100 miles deep in the earth about one to three billion years ago. A miracle of nature.

Yes. The same substance as natural diamonds: carbon crystallized in the cubic crystal system. Growth time is usually several days to four weeks. A technological miracle.

Yes, if they are cut to the angles and dimensions that take maximum advantage of their ability to bend light. The resulting display of intense white light and spectral colors exceeds that of any other natural substance. Sometimes sacrifices in cutting quality are made to save weight from the rough material — for instance, to make sure that a finished stone weighs at least one full carat, which consumers prefer to one that weighs less.

Yes. Lab-grown diamonds have the same optical properties as natural diamonds. Bringing out their beauty also depends on how well-cut they are. Whether natural or lab-grown, diamond rough is costly to obtain or produce and is never wasted. However, lab-grown diamonds have the advantage of continuous supply in qualities and sizes limited only by manufacturing capacity. This allows freedom to cut for maximum brilliance, which consumers desire.

Yes. Natural diamond’s superb durability, which includes its hardness, toughness, and stability, not only means that it can be worn and enjoyed every day; it’s also the reason that it has survived the conditions of extreme heat and pressure under which it was formed and the violent journey to the earth’s surface. The atomic structure that makes diamond so hard also makes it thermally conductive, resulting in many industrial uses.

Yes. Lab-grown diamonds have the same inherent physical properties as natural diamonds. At the industrial level, where they are called “synthetic diamond,” they are considered superior to natural diamond, because they can be manufactured to have specific properties and in unlimited quantities. The first synthetic diamonds appeared in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until 1971 that the first gem-quality synthetic diamond (of yellow color) was produced.

Yes. Some of the largest earth-moving operations in the world are devoted to finding natural diamonds. An annual average of 130,380,000 carats (28.74 U.S. tons) have been mined worldwide from 2011 through 2020. According to one authority, about 58% is gem quality, but other sources say less, to as little as 20%. About 50% of the weight of gem-quality diamonds is lost in cutting. At the high estimate, this works out to 37.8 million carats (8.33 U.S. tons) of polished gem-quality natural diamonds produced each year. There is constant effort to improve mining methods. One report states that 44% of the value of all rough diamonds comes from stones weighing more than 2.00 carats, but that those are only 7% of world production by total carats.

No. Lab-grown diamonds are not inherently rare. Their production depends on manufacturing capacity, not nature. In 2020, just 6 to 7 million carats of gem-quality rough were produced, three-quarters of it in China and India. But the year before, China alone produced more than 14.6 billion carats (3,200 tons) of synthetic diamond for industrial use. It’s forecast that the total weight of polished lab-grown diamonds in the retail market will grow from 3 million carats in 2021 to 7 million in 2025. This would represent an increase in lab-grown diamond market share of the total diamond market from 7.5% to 11.5%. Lab-grown diamonds can finish at more than 10.00 carats; retail sales of two-carat sizes are not uncommon.

Yes. The Natural Diamond Council’s testing program rates only one of 32 available instruments at 100% accuracy for identifying both natural and lab-grown diamonds. But tools and techniques are continually being improved and brought within reach of field gemologists and even some jewelry store personnel. The least costly but still reliable instrument does not identify a lab-grown diamond. Instead, it screens out the 95% or more of all natural diamonds that contain nitrogen as a trace impurity in a specific configuration that renders it opaque to short-wave ultraviolet light. The remaining stones are referred for further testing, as they might be natural or lab-grown. The most sophisticated instrument is the photoluminescence spectrometer, which measures at which wavelengths, and how much, a diamond fluoresces under ultraviolet light, thus indicating defects in the crystal structure (due to the presence or absence of trace impurities such as nitrogen) that can only develop in certain growth environments over millions of years.

Yes. Growing diamond crystals in weeks or days instead of millions of years makes their shapes different from natural crystals and results in distinctive luminescent colors and patterns which can be detected even after cutting. Lab-grown diamonds are made by one of two methods. The high pressure/high temperature (HPHT) method utilizes large presses with six anvils to force crystal growth from graphite onto a diamond seed, using a flux of molten metal. This adds six more faces to the eight of an ideally formed natural crystal. The chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method applies microwaves to methane gas inside reactors to precipitate carbon plasma onto flat, square diamond seed crystals that grow only upwards. To produce colorless material, both methods require freedom from traces of nitrogen. Although lab-grown diamonds are indeed made of carbon atoms arranged in forms of the cubic crystal system, because of the way they form over a much shorter time, at the deepest atomic level they are not absolutely identical to natural diamonds.

Like all mining activities, diamond mining disrupts the landscapes where it occurs. The major challenges are reduction of carbon emissions, land reclamation, prevention of water pollution, and wildlife protection. But large-scale miners have economic reasons to behave responsibly, as well as reputations to protect. The six current members of the Natural Diamond Council are major mining companies that together produce the majority of all natural diamonds. (The Russian company Alrosa resigned in March 2022.) They have various programs to ameliorate the damages resulting from their operations. For instance, member De Beers has promised to become carbon-neutral by 2030. They say one of the methods they will develop is the fascinating property of diamond ore to capture CO2. The practices of small-scale artisanal miners may be harder to change than those of large companies.

Unlike mining, the lab-grown diamond industry does not disrupt land or water, nor does it displace wildlife. It takes considerable energy to grow diamonds, but the industry does not have data on how much. This was why Federal Trade Commission staff in 2019 asked lab-grown diamond companies not to use terms like “eco-friendly” or “sustainable.” Actual carbon emissions must take into account that more than one-half of lab-grown diamonds are produced in China and one-fourth in India. These countries produce most of the world’s greenhouse gases due to their reliance on coal. But there is no inherent reason lab-grown diamonds cannot become carbon-neutral. One U.S. manufacturer states that their lab-grown diamonds are “sustainably grown” and another that theirs have third-party certification for “sustainability” and “carbon neutrality”.

The diamond mining industry spent years trying to rehabilitate its history of colonialism, even before apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994. But in the complex irony of history, violent rebel forces in Sierra Leone’s civil war from 1991-2002 seized diamonds from alluvial (riverbed) sources to finance their human rights abuses. This war was the basis of the 2006 movie “Blood Diamond;” the situation was revisited in-depth in a Time Magazine article in 2015. The diamond industry responded in 2003 by founding the Kimberley Process, a system of accountability in which 85 countries now participate and which they say has made 99.8% of all diamonds conflict-free. The World Diamond Council, established in 2000, represents the diamond industry in the Kimberley Process. Its 37 members include DeBeers, Tiffany, and the world’s wholesale trading exchanges. (The Council ended the Russian mining company’s membership in April 2022.) The Council promotes the industry’s social and economic benefits such as good wages and the construction of schools and hospitals in the communities where mining takes place, as well as for the 10 million people it says work in the industry worldwide. Ultimately, accountability depends on establishing provenance. To this end, various models to track a specific diamond from its origin to the end consumer, including blockchain, are being pursued.

The position that lab-grown diamonds are more ethical than natural diamonds focuses on flaws in the Kimberley Process: the definition of “conflict” diamonds is so narrow that it overlooks criminal activity not tied to civil conflict, including abuses by governments in power. Also, the lack of accountability: diamonds can be warrantied as conflict-free only at their last known source, but they are mixed in their journey from their origin through the supply chain. Human rights abuses are most acute in the informal diamond mining sector in western and central Africa, where artisanal and small-scale miners (often children) dig by hand from alluvial sources like riverbanks. Their output represents up to 20% of all diamonds in the marketplace. Many in the natural diamond industry acknowledge these problems but argue for improving conditions rather than boycotting diamonds, thereby denying livelihoods to workers and their families and devastating their countries’ economies. The argument was made even before the Ukrainian invasion that buying diamonds from the partly state-owned Russian mining company Alrosa is also an ethical breach. However, just how many Russian diamonds are in the marketplace is in question and an effort has been made through sanctions to curtail their flow of goods.

Yes. At the start of July 2022, wholesale prices for natural diamonds remain strong, with one-carat diamonds having D-I color, Flawless-VS2 clarity, and Excellent cut up by 16.8% over the same date in 2021; and three-carat diamonds of the same quality by 22.2%. This must be viewed in the context that 2021 was by many accounts the best year by far for retail jewelry sales in 30 years or more. The pandemic lowered supply: only 107 million carats of rough were mined in 2020, the lowest in at least 15 years. Meanwhile, consumer demand for natural diamond jewelry rebounded beyond expectations. Most observers say that inflation may affect discretionary income and weaken consumer demand for diamonds in the second half of 2022.

No. In 2021, prices for lab-grown diamonds continued their downward trajectory, with an average cost of 14% of natural diamonds at wholesale and 30% at retail. A spot check by this writer indicates an even greater disparity between natural and lab-grown diamonds at the retail level: a round diamond weighing 1.50 carats with G color, VS2 clarity, and Excellent cut might sell for $23,250 at an independently owned store. The same quality in a lab-grown would run about $3,250. It was reported in 2018 that the cost to grow a CVD lab-grown diamond was between $300 and $500 per carat, as compared with $4,000 per carat in 2008.

Yes. Controversy swirls around this question. While natural diamonds are not an investment in the strict sense, they can be a store of wealth, depending on their size and quality, as well as when they are bought, and at what markup. Beyond inflation, they can appreciate. This effect can take decades. Compared to most other consumer goods, some diamonds can recover a high percentage of, and even exceed, their original purchase price.

No. Controversy swirls around this question. Lab-grown diamonds are starting to be resold in used markets, so they have some residual value. But there does not seem to be any potential for them to appreciate, given their unlimited supply. Advocates say that, because they cost so much less to begin with, less money is lost even if they can’t be sold at all than the usual 50% or less of the original purchase price that is retrieved in the resale of most natural diamonds.