Search for a lab-grown diamond in Canada and you will find the same stone at three or four prices, in two currencies, with shipping, duty and tax hidden somewhere below the fold. This is the plain version: what a lab-grown diamond costs to buy here, what makes the number move, and where the money goes.
Why the price of a lab-grown diamond keeps falling
A lab-grown diamond is a diamond, carbon in the same crystal with the same hardness and the same optics. What it is not is rare. Growing capacity has expanded for years and prices have followed it down, steeply and without much pause. That is the single most important fact about paying for one. A stone that cost a certain amount last year costs less this year, and the stone you buy now will be cheaper next year too. We say this on every lab-grown page we have because a buyer who knows it makes a better decision than one who is told it after the sale.
The consequence for the price tag is that a lab-grown diamond should never be priced from a list that was printed months ago. Ours are priced to the live market, to the dollar, and repriced as it moves. When the market falls, our price falls with it, for everyone at once. A round number on a lab-grown stone is a number somebody decided; a precise one is a number the market set.
What you are paying for
Four things, in order of size. The stone itself, bought at the trade price the day you see it. The house margin, which on loose stones declines as the stone's value rises, so a larger stone is never punished for being larger. The laboratory report, which is a fixed cost of a few dollars against a stone worth thousands and is the best money in the whole transaction. And the setting, if you are buying a finished piece, priced from the metal at weight and the making.
What you are not paying for matters as much. No showroom lease. No floor of aging stock being financed at your expense. No investment story, because there is none to sell. The lab-grown pages on this site say plainly that resale recovers little, and a price that does not have to carry that story can stay lean.
Carat, colour and the grades that cost nothing
Because lab-grown stones are grown to order, the grades that are scarce in the ground are common in the lab. High colour and high clarity cost far less over a mid grade than they do in a natural stone, and the useful question becomes whether you can see the difference at all. Usually you cannot, past a certain point, and the money is better spent on cut, which is the one grade that decides how a diamond behaves in light. Size is where lab-grown wins outright: at a set budget it buys more carat, and that is the honest reason to choose it.
Buy lab for the size and the occasion. Never as a thing you expect to resell.
The report in the box
Every lab-grown diamond we sell carries its own report from an independent laboratory, and for lab-grown stones that is usually IGI. The report travels with the stone, and the grade is the laboratory's, never ours. If the stone that arrives is not the stone on the paper, you write to us within 7 days of delivery and we repair, replace or refund in full. Which report to ask for, and what each laboratory is known for, is its own piece: IGI, GIA or HRD: which report to ask for in Canada.
Currency, duty and the border
Every price on this site is in Canadian dollars and it is the price you pay. Nothing is converted at checkout, and a stone or piece delivered inside Canada crosses no border, so there is no duty and no brokerage fee waiting at the door. That is a real difference from buying in US dollars from a seller abroad, where the number on the page is rarely the number on the card statement. We ship insured, signature required, to 23 countries, and Canada is the home market.
What the guarantee adds to the price, which is nothing
- Matched to its report
- Checked within 7 days of delivery, or refunded.
- Loose stone returns
- 30 days to be sure, insured return shipping arranged by us.
- Making faults
- Put right for 24 months on any piece made for you.
- Lead time on a piece
- 3 to 4 weeks once the stone is chosen.
None of these is a paid add-on. They are the terms of the sale, and they are on the guarantee page in full, exclusions first.
Dagarias Vancouver
A family in the diamond trade for generations
Asked, answered plainly