The Lab-Grown Diamond Boom Is Over
- The lab-grown diamond boom is over, jewelry industry experts say.
- Lab-grown gems are mainstream now and real diamonds are back in vogue, analysts told Business Insider.
- Prices for lab-grown diamonds are likely to tumble amid a glut of supply.
The man-made diamond boom is over, and prices for ultra-trendy lab-grown diamonds are set to tumble this year, industry veterans say.
Paul Zimnisky, a leading diamond analyst, foresees jewelers scaling back their business in lab-grown diamonds while ramping up their focus on natural diamonds over the next year. In fact, most jewelers aren’t even bothering to stock lab-grown diamonds in inventory, and are only purchasing them on consignment, he told Business Insider.
It’s the exact opposite of what jewelers have been doing since 2018, when the hype for lab-grown diamonds took off.
“Some of the fad is starting to fade a bit,” Zimnisky said, pointing to lower-priced retailers like Walmart and Pandora, who have started to “aggressively” push lab-grown stones. “I think it’s become a lot more mainstream.”
Prices for lab-grown diamonds will continue to fall over the next year, he said. Ziminsky didn’t have a price target, but said he believed loose lab-grown diamonds could see nearly the same price decline as they did in 2023, which the jewelry analytics firm Tenoris estimated to be about 20% in the 12 months leading up to November.
Cormac Kinney, the CEO of the commodities trading firm Diamond Standard, believes the plunge could be even steeper as the hype over lab-grown gems fades. Man-made diamond prices could ultimately drop another 50%-80%, he estimated.
“Fashion jewelry is always worth a small fraction of real jewelry,” Kinney said. “Only real is rare.”