Guide
About lab-grown diamonds
DLV sets only lab-grown diamonds, made by chemical vapour deposition. Here is what that means, in plain terms.
What a lab-grown diamond is
Mined and lab-grown diamonds are both carbon arranged in a particular crystal lattice. Nature makes that lattice under heat and pressure over a very long time. A laboratory makes the same lattice on purpose, in weeks.
The method DLV buys is chemical vapour deposition, or CVD. A thin seed crystal is placed in a chamber, a carbon-rich gas is introduced, and energy breaks the gas apart so that carbon settles onto the seed atom by atom. The crystal grows layer upon layer. It is then cut and polished exactly like any other rough.
The result is not an imitation. It is a lab-grown diamond, with the same hardness, the same refractive index and the same dispersion as a mined diamond — the fire you see when it catches the light. Cubic zirconia and moissanite are diamond simulants: different materials that only look a little alike. What comes out of a CVD chamber is a lab-grown diamond.
How it is graded
On the same scales used for mined diamonds. Colour runs D to Z; clarity runs from Flawless downwards. A lab-grown diamond is assessed against those scales in exactly the way a mined one is, and any grading report for it says plainly that it is lab-grown.
DLV works in E–F colour and VS clarity. E and F sit in the colourless band, at the top of the scale. VS means the inclusions are difficult to see under ten times magnification — and invisible to you across a dinner table.
Can anyone tell?
Not by looking. Not with a loupe. Lab-grown and mined diamonds are separated in a gemmological laboratory using instruments that read each one’s growth pattern and its fluorescence, because the difference is in how the crystal formed, not in what it is made of.
We are not interested in you passing one off as the other, which is precisely why the origin is printed on the header of every page of this site, on the specification of every piece, and on the invoice.
Why the price is different
Finding, extracting and sorting mined rough is enormously expensive, and that cost sits in a mined diamond before it is ever cut. Growing carbon in a chamber is an industrial process with a known cost per carat that has fallen steadily as the technology has matured.
What this means for you is simple: the same money buys a noticeably larger, cleaner, whiter lab-grown diamond. The gold, the bench work and the setting cost the same either way — which you can see for yourself, because every gold product page on this site breaks the price into metal, making and lab-grown diamonds.
What DLV promises
- We set only lab-grown diamonds, made by CVD. We do not sell mined diamonds alongside them.
- Every lab-grown diamond we set is E–F colour and VS clarity.
- The origin is stated on the product page, the specification and the invoice.
- The gold is BIS hallmarked, and the HUID is recorded against the piece you receive.