What are lab grown or created diamonds?

First, and foremost they are real diamonds. They have an identical carbon structure to mined diamonds.

The most common process for creating a lab grown diamond is the CVD - Chemical Vapor Deposition - diamond. The CVD method uses diamond slivers or seeds placed in a vacuum chamber along with carbon rich gasses and heated to at least 800 degrees Celsius. The gases turn into plasma due to the high temperatures, releasing carbon pieces. These small pieces of carbon layer themselves onto the diamond seeds and eventually turn into a larger diamond that will eventually be cut into the diamonds you see on our site.

The HPHT - High Pressure High Temperature - also uses a diamond seed. It is placed in carbon, using high pressure and very high heat to melt and form the carbon around the seed.

They can be distinguished from mined diamonds using specialized equipment. For example CVD diamonds are Type IIa which are quite rare types to be found in nature. That can lead those in labs to test further with other equipment. Otherwise to the naked eye no one would tell the difference in the case of the colorless stones.

In the case of fancy colors, Lab Grown Diamonds offer a far wider variety due to the way they are grown, and post growth treatments. We're sticklers with our Earth mined diamonds, and always have been. We've always offered natural (non treated) fancy colored diamonds.

Now, due to the opportunity to use exponentially less costly rough, combined with advances in the Irradiation treatment commonly used, we can offer reasonably priced Blue and Pink Diamonds.

At this point, the only yellow lab grown diamonds are so yellow - they are almost orangy. They are not popular because the color is too strong. They've not figured out how to get light or even intense yellow at this time.

Due to the nature of Lab Grown Diamonds, it is hard to distinguish which have been treated for color or not. GIA even will notate this on certain lab grown diamond reports. We assume most, if not all, lab grown diamonds have been treated for color in some way.

Click HERE for our Lab Grown Diamond collection. Click HERE for our Lab Grown Diamond Ring collection.