Couples find that lab-grown diamonds make it cheaper to get engaged or upgrade to a bigger ring. But there are rocky moments.
4 min
Wedding planner Sterling Boulet has some advice for brides-to-be regarding lab-grown diamonds, which cost a fraction of the natural ones.
“If you’re trying to get your man to propose, they’ll propose faster if you offer this as an option,” says Boulet, of Raleigh, N.C. Recently, she adds, a friend’s fiancé “thanked me the next three times I saw him” for telling him about the cheaper lab-made option.
Man-made diamonds are catching on, despite some lingering stigma. This year was the first time that sales of lab-made and natural mined loose diamonds, primarily used as centre stones in engagement rings, were split evenly, according to data from Tenoris, a jewellery and diamond trend-analytics company.
The rise of lab-made stones, however, is bringing up quirks alongside the perks. Now that blingier engagement rings—above two or three carats—are more affordable, more people are dealing with the peculiarities of wearing rather large rocks.
Esther Hare, a 5-foot-11-inch former triathlete, sought out a 4.5-carat lab-made oval-shaped diamond to fit her larger hands as a part of her vow renewal in Hawaii last year. It was a far cry from the half-carat ring her husband proposed with more than 25 years ago and the 1.5-carat upgrade they purchased 10 years ago. Hare, 50, who lives in San Jose, Calif., and works in high tech, chose a $40,000 lab-made diamond because “it’s nuts” to have to spend $100,000 on a natural stone. “It had to be big—that was my vision,” she says.
But the size of the ring has made it less practical at times. She doesn’t wear it for athletic training and swaps in her wedding band instead. And she is careful to leave it at home when traveling. “A lot of times I won’t take it on vacation because it’s just a monster,” she says.
The average retail price for a one-carat lab-made loose diamond decreased to $1,426 this year from $3,039 in 2020, according to the Tenoris data. Similar-sized loose natural diamonds cost $5,426 this year, compared with $4,943 in 2020.
Lab-made diamonds have essentially the same chemical makeup as natural ones, and look the same, unless viewed through sophisticated equipment that gauges the characteristics of emitted light.
At Ritani, an online jewellery retailer, lab-made diamond sales make up about 70% of the diamonds sold, up from roughly 30% two years ago, says Juliet Gomes, head of customer service at the company, based in White Plains, N.Y.
Ritani sometimes records videos of the lab-diamonds pinging when exposed to a “diamond tester,” a tool that judges authenticity, to show customers that the man-made rocks behave the same as natural ones. “We definitely have some deep conversations with them,” Gomes says.
Not all gem dealers are rolling with these stones.
Philadelphia jeweller Steven Singer only stocks the natural stuff in his store and is planning a February campaign to give about 1,000 one-carat lab-made diamonds away free to prove they are “worthless.” Anyone can sign up online and get one in the mail; even shipping is free. “I’m not selling Frankensteins that were built in a lab,” Singer says.
Some brides are turned off by the larger bling now allowed by the lower prices.When her now-husband proposed with a two-carat lab-grown engagement ring, Tiffany Buchert, 40, was excited about the prospect of marriage—but not about the size of the diamond, which she says struck her as “costume jewellery-ish.”
“I said yes in the moment, of course, I didn’t want it to be weird,” says the physician assistant from West Chester, Pa.
But within weeks, she says, she fessed up, telling her fiancé: “I think I hate this ring.”
The couple returned it and then bought a one-carat natural diamond for more than double the price.
When Boulet, the wedding planner in Raleigh, got engaged herself, she was over the moon when her fiancé proposed with a 2.3 carat lab-made diamond ring. “It’s very shiny, we were almost worried it was too shiny and was going to look fake,” she says.
It doesn’t, which presents another issue—looking like someone who really shelled out for jewellery. Boulet will occasionally volunteer that her diamond ring came from a lab.
“I don’t want people to think I’m putting on airs, or trying to be flashier than I am,” she says.
For Daniel Teoh, a 36-year-old software engineer outside of Detroit, buying a cheaper lab-made diamond for his fiancée meant extra room in his $30,000 ring budget.
Instead of a bigger ring, he got her something they could both enjoy. During a walk while on an annual ski trip to South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Teoh popped the question and handed his now-wife a handmade wooden box that included a 2.5-carat lab-made diamond ring—and a car key.
She put on the ring, celebrated with both of their sisters and a friend, who was the unofficial photographer of the happy event, and then they drove back to the house. There, she saw a 1965 Mustang GT coupe in Wimbledon white with red stripes and a bow on top.
Looking back, Teoh says, it was still the diamond that made the big first impression.
“It wasn’t until like 15 minutes later she was like ‘so, what’s with this key?’” he adds.
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New research suggests that bonuses make employees feel more like a mere cog in a wheel.
2 min
When it comes to rewarding workers financially, cash isn’t always king.
Companies frequently give employees monetary bonuses, but a new study suggests that paid vacation time is a perk employers should also consider.
The study’s authors say that while they didn’t explicitly look into whether employees prefer time off, the study found that receiving extra vacation time rather than bonus money makes workers feel less like a mere cog in a wheel and more like people who are recognised and valued as individuals with a life beyond work.
It makes them feel more human, in the researchers’ terms.
And that feeling benefits employers as well as employees, says Sanford DeVoe, a professor at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, and one of the study’s authors.
Feeling more human is strongly correlated with higher job satisfaction, greater engagement with work, better relationships with colleagues and less inclination to leave a job, he says.
In one experiment, the researchers asked about 1,500 participants to recall times when they received a monetary bonus or paid time off—all had received both—and how that made them feel.
Participants responded to the question on a 7-point scale, from feeling more like a robot on the low end of the scale to feeling more human on the high end. Monetary bonuses were given an average score of 5.04, compared with 5.4 for paid vacation time.
“While that difference may sound modest numerically, it represents a meaningful psychological shift,” says DeVoe. “It’s the difference between feeling neutral and feeling genuinely seen as a person.”
The authors then sought to better understand why paid vacation time made employees feel more human. In another experiment, about 500 participants were asked to imagine starting a new job where they might be awarded a bonus. Some were told the bonus would be an extra week of vacation, others were told it would be an extra week of pay.
Participants were then asked about their expectations for being able to keep their work and home lives separate in the new job. Those who could hope for a bonus of extra time off expected more separation between their work and personal lives than those whose potential bonus would be extra pay.
They also reported feeling more human on the 7-point scale. This suggested to the researchers that time off makes people feel more human because it creates a clearer psychological distance from work than a monetary bonus.
In a third experiment, the researchers further tested the idea that clear boundaries between work and personal lives were driving their results.
Two hundred participants were told to imagine being on a vacation and receiving two texts, including one from their mother. Half were told the second text was from a friend and half were told the second text was from their boss.
The authors then measured how human participants felt after each scenario. The average score for those receiving a text from a friend was 5.4 on the 7-point scale, compared with 4.16 for those receiving a text from the boss.
The difference in the scores “demonstrates that even minimal work intrusions can undo the psychological benefits of time off,” says DeVoe. “It shows that it’s not just time away that matters—it’s whether work actually lets go.”
All of this is important for employers looking to get the most out of their workers, he says. “For managers concerned with sustainable productivity, giving people uninterrupted time away from work can be a powerful lever.”
