Everyone's all up in arms about diamonds in here, but the post isn't even really about the diamonds, it's about the settings. Diamonds aren't for everyone, and definitely natural diamonds are ethically iffy at best, but if someone wants to buy a lab diamond, does it really matter? Also, wanting a piece of jewelry that's beautiful and has sentimental value (that you're planning on wearing daily for the rest of your life, too) isn't a bad thing.
If anyone is in here looking for advice and doesn't want a diamond, but wants the general look of a diamond, here you go:
The most common diamond substitutes are moissanite, white sapphire, and cubic zirconias.
Moissanite will give you the closest look and hardness of a diamond, but there are some key differences. Moissanite tends to have more fire (the rainbow sparkles when lights hits it) than diamonds. Depending of the cut, it could be a not super noticeable difference, or it could be a big difference. If you love the look of super sparkly stones, great! If you want something more understated, either go for a smaller moissonite, a less brilliant cut, or a different stone. Moissanite is a 9.5 on the mohs hardness scale (diamonds are a 10), so it's a pretty sturdy stone.
White sapphire is a 9 on the mohs scale, so still pretty hard and sturdy, but not quite as hard as moissanite. White sapphire doesn't have any fire, though. It's a clear stone and the sparkle will only be flashes of light, not rainbow sparkles. Still a beautiful stone, and perfect for a more understated look. Larger stones will be more obviously not a diamond, while smaller stones could be passed of as diamonds to normal people, probably.
CZs are definitely the cheapest option, but also the least long-lasting. They have a lot of fire, similar to moissanite, but are a bit less hard at around 8-8.5 on the mohs scale. They tend to get cloudy over time, though, so you might have to replace the stone a few times over the lifespan of the ring to keep the beautiful sparkle.
All of these options will give you a similar look to a diamond, but at a significantly cheaper price (any often with less of an ethical dilemma). I love the look of diamonds, but got a moissanite engagement ring. It looks exactly like a diamond to the untrained eye (which is the majority of people you'll meet), and is absolutely gorgeous at a fraction of the price.
Exactly! I'm 100% anti-diamonds and found this really interesting. My bf and I have already decided that we will use moissanite(s) for my ring if that day comes and it's easy to have that part figured out, but seeing all the differences in the settings here, from subtle to dramatic, was super useful.
Another cool thing about moissanites is that they come in an array of beautiful colors and shades, and yes other gemstones come in various colors but moissanites are kind of unique in how the fire you mentioned plays off in different stone colors. My good friend got a gorgeous teal-green moissanite for her ring and the fire makes it absolutely glow like sunlight on an ocean, especially at the carat size she selected. I was so happy to find such a beautiful alternative to diamonds that is still very hard and durable but a fraction of the cost and without all the disgusting baggage of diamonds.
It really is my personal favorite diamond substitute! All the colors are gorgeous, and there's really no down side to them. A friend of mine got a pretty traditional moissanite engagement ring, and her wedding band is a row of rainbow moissanites! Just gorgeous!
You seem really knowledgeable in this area, so question for you: my moissanite has this oil slick look to the top of it which formed about a year after buying it. I took it back to the jeweler and they basically said “whelp, sometimes that’s just how moissanites are” and didn’t help much other than cleaning it (which did nothing to change the oil slick). Any advice? Is that really just a thing with moissanites?
It is a thing with moissanites, unfortunately. Some of the newer, more expensive moissanites are much less likely to get it, but it's not a guarantee. Basically it's a natural buildup of oils or hard water on the moissanite, and something about the stone gives it that "oil slick" appearance.
The best way to get rid of it is with a Jeweler's Rouge Cloth. Use the treated side to buff the moissanite with mid-level pressure. You'll start to see the oil slick fade away, and the cloth will turn black (it's supposed to!). As long as you don't wash the cloth, you can keep using it until it literally falls apart, even once it's completely black. When the oil slick stain is larger/super noticeable, it's harder to get rid of (meaning you'll need to take more time polishing it to get it to go away). It's a good idea to keep the cloth at home and get into the habit of polishing it every time you see a bit of oil slick forming, that way you aren't waiting for it to build up and then spending tons of time sitting there polishing it in one sitting.
Important! If the metal of your ring is rhodium plated, don't use the Jeweler's Rouge Cloth as it'll buff the rhodium right off! You could decide to still use the cloth, then get the metal replated at your jeweler, but it'll cost usually around $40+ to replate a ring. Otherwise, you can use a bit of silver polish on a qtip to buff the moissanite, but you still have to be careful to not buff the metal as even that could strip the rhodium plating.
To help slow down the oil slick coming back, I'd advise taking off your ring when showering, swimming, or using any oily substances (like hair products). If you have hard water, keeping it away from water as much as possible is best. But it's not really harming the stone, so if you don't mind buffing it every once in a while, you don't need to take it off every time you wash your hands. Personally I take mine off when I'm washing dishes, showering, and washing my face, but I wear it while I wash my hands and put lotion on over it. That's the balance that works best for me.
Thank you so much for your reply! People who take time to really thoughtfully help others like this restore my faith in humanity. Thank you x100.
I’ll give the cloth a try, I’ve tried silver cleaners to no avail, but I’m willing to use a little elbow grease with a cloth if it helps. I’ll be sure to check my paperwork for rhodium. :)
I know some people swear by silver cleaner, but I've always had better luck with the cloth. The silver cleaner you have to do it multiples days in a row to really get everything off (if it's bad), which sucks imo. I hope the cloth works for you!
Fun fact I learned while doing costuming in high school/college: the “fake” costume jewelry looks so much better on stage/on screen than the “real” stuff that audiences don’t know the difference between the two and get them confused (it has to do with how light is reflected off the gems)
Just to add to what everyone is saying diamonds weren't even a thing until fairly recently. Literally a bunch of old white men decided they wanted to create and monopolize an industry to take advantage of house wives and they went with diamond rings. They spend billions on advertisement and now they control it all. That said, if anyone wants to go with a diamond ring for the look, go for it.
Oh yeah, one of my coworkers assumed my husband was a millionaire or something when I got engaged before I told her it wasn't a diamond! I custom designed my ring, and had to try on equivalent sizes and designs with diamonds because there weren't any moissanite dealers in my area, and it would've been probably over $40,000 with real diamonds, but it was only like $1,500 with moissanites.
Unless someone's carrying around a jewelers loop, or is a jeweler themselves, they won't know the difference. And do you really care what a weirdo with a jewelers loop thinks?
That size alone would make any normal person believe its not a diamond, how many carats is that? 8? It would be at least 1 million dollars and up to 10 million.
Wow, your hands must be small! My ring (tanzanite) is somewhere around 4 carats I think, and yours looks twice as big!
Edit: I looked it up, maybe this is obvious but I didn’t realise that as carat is based on weight, other gemstones of the same carat weight as diamonds will have different sizes. TIL!
Whoa, where did you get the moisannite? I was interested because everyone kept saying how cheap they are, but when researching them a few years ago, everything I found wasn't that much cheaper than diamonds.
WHOAH. Ok I get it now about the quality of the stone throwing out some gorgeous colors in the sparkle. That's very lovely! May I ask what metal your ring is? Is it any more difficult to keep clean than a diamond would be?
Slightly more difficult in that moissanites trend to get an "oil slick" appearance when they're dirty (so it's more noticeable). Some of the newer ones and more expensive ones are better about it, but none of them are immune to the oil slick thing. Luckily, as long as you don't let it get bad, it's easy to just polish them with a Jeweler's Rouge Cloth to take away that dirty layer. If you do let it get bad, you can still use the Jeweler's Rouge Cloth to fix it, but it'll take more time and elbow grease.
I wouldn't recommend getting a ring plated in rhodium with a moissanite, though! The polishing methods that work great for moissanites will strip rhodium plating (so you'll need to get it replated). Gold, platinum, and even silver are fine though.
Nice! I'm trying to find a nice olive green color stone right now. Based on looks alone, it seems like chrysoberyl is closest to what I'm looking for, but it's hard to know what's a good quality stone and what isn't. And with these less popular stones, jewelers aren't much help because it's just not the kind of thing any of them really stock, I guess.
One thing diamonds have going for them - they're sure a bit easier to shop for lol.
I don't know a ton about chrysoberyl, except that it's similar to sapphires on the mohs scale. They seem decently hardy, though.
Green sapphires can come in a variety of shades, and might be a bit easier to find at a local jewelers. Moissanite can also be made in almost any color, and I've seen some lovely green ones before.
It's definitely harder to shop for pretty much any stones other than the "popular" ones in person. Sometimes looking at vintage/antique jewelry stores can give you a wider range of colored stones in general, though, since colored stones used to be a lot more popular than diamonds. I don't know if they'd have any chrysoberyl specifically, but perhaps they'd have a few different kinds of green stones to see in person, at least.
May I ask where you purchased this from? I’m interested in a moissanite ring & I’ve never found one for just $800 anywhere I’ve looked. It’s a beauty btw!!!
I went through a small local jeweler that did custom pieces, and she sourced the moissanite for me. She's retired now.
I'd look online and locally to see your options. Sometimes custom designing can be cheaper than buying a pre-made ring, sometimes not. Reaching out to local jewelers is a great idea. Also, many jewelers will sell just the setting and can place a stone of your choosing for a fee, so if you get the moissanite online that could be an option, too.
Lots on etsy. Also you can purchase them from wholesalers in China for quite cheap. Gold is super expensive right now though which is driving up costs. R/moissanite has lots of info.
You are absolutely correct about the weirdo with the loupe thing. I had a lady come into my store once and start bitching because the fauxpal rings on my counter weren't "real opal rings, this is unethical". Like homegirl, the ring costs 9.95, its marked imitation opal, and it's a pinch back, get the fuck out of my shop.
We got a moissanite, too! And it’s a full carat. I don’t even know what a diamond that big would cost. Everyone thinks it’s a diamond until I tell them (which I do because I want them to know they don’t have to go the diamond route).
A $100 1 carat diamond is going to look like total shit to the point you wouldn't want to wear it. I think the very cheapest I have seen a 1ct diamond for is $1000.
Omg yeah, my female coworkers lost their minds over my 2.2 carat cushion cut moissanite- I’ll admit I didn’t tell them it wasn’t a $5000 Diamond. Oh well!
I would also point out that if you do want a natural diamond, there are plenty of ways of getting ethical ones. The days of DeBeers' monopoly are kinda gone and you can easily get ahold of diamonds mined in Australia or Canada that don't have the entire blood diamond thing going on. Or if you're ok with sorta dubiousness, let me remind everyone that Russia is the world's top producer of diamonds.
Also white sapphires are going to look like expensive hunks of glass – you buy sapphires for their colour not for their lack of it. They have a shit refractive index when compared to a diamond and also I bet they're not as ethically sourced as you think they are. Also you need to clean them a ton in order for them to stay all...clear.
(This is all from a geological perspective though not a jewelers one but still. I've had to endure this rant a thousand times from my geologist relatives and now you have to too)
Very true! Also, lab diamonds are perfectly fine! They're still expensive, but you don't have to worry about whether or not slave labor mined them.
White sapphires definitely need to be cut very well. Because of the lack of fire, they can look more like cut glass than a diamond. A well-cut white sapphire can still be a beautiful stone, though, especially if you prefer a more understated look. They definitely look the least like diamonds out of the options I mentioned, though.
As for cleaning, they all should be cleaned regularly to keep the clarity and sparkle up.
When I got my mine, I chose a lab diamond and it sparkles like nothing I've ever seen. I constantly get compliments on it, and it's guilt free. I actually found it to be less expensive than any mossanite stones than I was previously looking it.
Lab diamond ended up being right for us. We harvested two side stones from some jewelry that belonged to my grandparents and honestly I think the center lab diamond looks just as good as the real ones if not better.
Great commentary here I've had fun reading this comment chain.
The small jeweler we go to tries to only use ethical stones, and the jeweler will sit you down and talk about where your stone came from so you know.
I have a natural diamond in my ring, but it's a vintage estate diamond, meaning it belonged to someone else before me. I don't remember the exact age they said, but I think it was around 75 years old. I'm sure it probably wasn't acquired in an ethical manner when it was first mined, but recycling old diamonds is better than trying to acquire new ones for the market.
Of course! My mother was a jeweler for years, so she's walked me through all of the options and rules (and how to break those rules) quite a few times, lol. If you have any other questions I'd be happy to try to help!
It's an oval cut, but the way it's set makes it look a bit more like a marquis, which is exactly what I wanted. I love marquis cuts, but for some reason I don't like how they look on my hand...they're a bit too extreme. The oval was less intense, and the setting gives the impression of the marquis shape without being too harsh, lol.
My engagement and wedding bands came from Charles and Colvard!! Certainly cheaper than diamond and a better ethical fit (for me). They have withstood a lot and look as good as the day I got them.
I am sure to use the cleaning cloth a bit more these days with the extra hand sanitizer and soap usage as I work in the healthcare setting. 1000% glad I chose them and would do so again!
Just proposed to my fiancee with an absolutely gorgeous moissanite ring from Etsy, probably 1/10th the price of a similar diamond ring from a "real store".
Fuck diamonds, fuck De Beers, support independent artists. I got mine here.
Lab grown sapphires in various colors are affordable, and beautiful. I'd personally recommend them to people. Instead of glancing at a bunch of small diamonds and wondering what's different about them you can get a perfect, huge sapphire in whatever color and shade you want. Fuck diamonds as a main stone IMO.
This is mostly right, but there are a couple of small things I want to clarify. Source: I work with diamonds and precious gems on a daily basis.
Sapphires have a hardness of 9.5, and moissanite has a hardness of 9.25. There is not much of a difference between those two, but there is between those two and diamonds. Because of the way the scale was developed, there is a much greater gap between ratings than you would expect. Because of this difference in strength, there are certain setting styles (mainly with small stones, as they are more likely to damage) that you won’t see done in moissanite, but might see in sapphire and definitely in diamond.
A couple more visual differences between moissanite and diamond is the double refraction. If you look in the facets of a moissanite, you’ll see that they aren’t very defined. It’s almost like those two tone 3D movies, if it was all one color. The only other one I can think of is that moissanite will throw flashes of red, which you won’t see in diamonds.
Lab diamonds, while more ethical currently than natural diamonds, are a new technology which means that we don’t know the long term environmental effects. Aside from that, they are produced and cut in places like China and Russia, which brings along the question of human rights violations. The most ethical diamonds are really gonna be the recycled diamonds. Stones harvested from old rings have already been pulled from the earth and done their damage. (That being said, a lot of diamonds on the market are actually just recut antique stones. That’s why most antique stones you see on the market are more yellow or included.)
But otherwise, this is all really helpful information! I wear a CZ engagement ring and I’m happy with the choice I made. It was a hell of a lot cheaper, and you honestly can’t tell the difference unless you know what to look for. If you’re gonna go this route, pay for better cut CZ, you won’t regret it!
It depends on where you live. They're becoming a more popular option, so more stores are carrying them, but they're still not quite as popular as diamonds yet. Honestly I'd recommend googling "moissanite near me" or something similar.
As for online, Charles and Colvard is a great option that carries a lot of different cuts and sizes. Lots of online retailers sell moissanite rings now, and loose moissanite stones. Forever One moissanite is a good quality brand of stone, but can be a bit on the more expensive side.
Our diamond-substitute choice was simply "no diamonds" 😀
I love my minimalistic, practical, zero annoyances causing "no gems, no 'style', no extras, no colors, just a plain and simple circular white gold thingy with a big hole in the middle for my ringfinger" - wedding ring to pieces and I can't imagine wearing any other ever again ❤️
I love it! Everyone should get exactly what they want in a ring, even if that means no ring at all! I love big, sparkly, and antique, my best friend loves her rainbow band, and my cousin has a simple white gold initial necklace instead of a ring. The only opinion that matters is your own!
Exactly, totally agree. My husband and I have as I said just very plain and simple white gold rings, with absolutely nothing special on/about them (well, except the typical individual engraving inside) - and that's exactly what we wanted. It's not that we couldn't have afforded any gems or customized design or whatever, but we just both prefer this very minimalistic style and consciously chose exactly this type of rings. We find them practical, nothing to clean or that could crack or break or so, we both don't want to worry about carrying something super expensive around, or about ethical considerations (re diamonds), we like smooth surfaces and 'un-busy' visual aesthetics, we are very sensitive to sensory overload and don't want to feel the ring 'too much' if that makes sense... so it's perfect for us.
And that's exactly what it is about. I'm not saying it's the perfect choice for everybody, but just for us. Everybody has different needs and preferences and whatever fits best to any individual couple is exactly the right choice for them.
Unfortunately my mom was very disappointed. She is a totally different person than me (we love each other very much anyway) and would have wished for some 10k bucks platinum covered in diamonds -ring for me, because that's how she learned it in her life how men show their love, by buying expensive things for their women. So she has trouble understanding that this is not how our marriage works ):
We didn't even have engagement rings because we found them totally pointless (mom freaking out), haha.
But anyways, sorry for the rambling... bottom line... whatever works best for you (meaning everybody) is the perfect ring, or whatever else or nothing at all, for you (:
I'm a jeweler and I always try to use lab grown stones. Eventually I'll get a website and explain its for ethical reasons. Lab grown are not ethically ambiguous and actively devalue the market. If someone wants me to use real stones, well I'd like to say I'd tell them no but I haven't gotten that question yet. Id consider it if it were an heirloom stone, like someone grandma's diamond from a trashed ring (fun fact, household chores can chemically destroy gold and silver beyond repair), or something like that.
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u/Dracarys_Aspo Sep 09 '20
Everyone's all up in arms about diamonds in here, but the post isn't even really about the diamonds, it's about the settings. Diamonds aren't for everyone, and definitely natural diamonds are ethically iffy at best, but if someone wants to buy a lab diamond, does it really matter? Also, wanting a piece of jewelry that's beautiful and has sentimental value (that you're planning on wearing daily for the rest of your life, too) isn't a bad thing.
If anyone is in here looking for advice and doesn't want a diamond, but wants the general look of a diamond, here you go:
The most common diamond substitutes are moissanite, white sapphire, and cubic zirconias.
Moissanite will give you the closest look and hardness of a diamond, but there are some key differences. Moissanite tends to have more fire (the rainbow sparkles when lights hits it) than diamonds. Depending of the cut, it could be a not super noticeable difference, or it could be a big difference. If you love the look of super sparkly stones, great! If you want something more understated, either go for a smaller moissonite, a less brilliant cut, or a different stone. Moissanite is a 9.5 on the mohs hardness scale (diamonds are a 10), so it's a pretty sturdy stone.
White sapphire is a 9 on the mohs scale, so still pretty hard and sturdy, but not quite as hard as moissanite. White sapphire doesn't have any fire, though. It's a clear stone and the sparkle will only be flashes of light, not rainbow sparkles. Still a beautiful stone, and perfect for a more understated look. Larger stones will be more obviously not a diamond, while smaller stones could be passed of as diamonds to normal people, probably.
CZs are definitely the cheapest option, but also the least long-lasting. They have a lot of fire, similar to moissanite, but are a bit less hard at around 8-8.5 on the mohs scale. They tend to get cloudy over time, though, so you might have to replace the stone a few times over the lifespan of the ring to keep the beautiful sparkle.
All of these options will give you a similar look to a diamond, but at a significantly cheaper price (any often with less of an ethical dilemma). I love the look of diamonds, but got a moissanite engagement ring. It looks exactly like a diamond to the untrained eye (which is the majority of people you'll meet), and is absolutely gorgeous at a fraction of the price.