With lab grown diamonds you can get a bigger or higher quality diamond with the same budget. Upgrading carat, cut, clarity or customizing the perfect lab grown diamond  ring is a surprisingly affordable endeavor. This is because lab grown diamonds are up to 40% less expensive than traditional mined diamonds of the same quality. When you think about the fact that lab grown diamonds are exactly the same as earth-grown diamonds in every way but cost a significant amount less, you realize there really is no need to buy a mined diamond.

Traditional mined diamonds have a long-standing reputation of being unethical—and for a valid reason. Mined diamonds have been used to fund wars in Africa, have a huge environmental impact and require a lot of energy to extract them from the earth. Given that lab grown diamonds are created in a controlled environment,

Mining for diamonds causes significant environmental damage. To find a single 1-carat diamond, between 88,000 and 176,000 pounds of dirt must be sifted through. This means that diamond mines are some of the largest man-made holes on Earth and have seriously affected ecological systems.

These are all serious ethical and humanitarian issues that can be avoided with lab grown diamonds. In addition to the ethical violations, the supply chain for mined diamonds is quite long. This is because the origin of a mined diamond isn’t as easily traceable as a lab grown diamond, making it much more difficult to ensure that the diamond you are purchasing is ethically sourced.

Lab grown diamonds, on the other hand,  are created in a controlled environment using similar conditions found in nature (pressure and temperature) so you can tell exactly where it originated and with minimal environmental impact.

Diamonds grown in a lab are the same as real diamonds—pure crystallized carbon in the isometric cubic system. Both have the same chemical, optical and physical properties.

Therefore, by purchasing a lab grown diamond, both ecological and humanitarian issues are avoided.