SEATTLE -- When Stephen Reed, 41, and Shelby Leyland, 38, were ready to make it official, the couple visited Seattle-area jewelers to look at natural and lab-grown diamond rings.

We got the quote, and, when it was four, five figures, our eyes got real big," Reed said in a phone interview. "Leaving the jeweler, I remember my wife being like, 'I don't think that one's for us.'"

Instead, Reed found a Utah-based jeweler with an Etsy online storefront. The Star Wars fan gravitated toward a ring that reminded him of the Millennium Falcon starship, with a topaz center piece.

He proposed in early 2020 in Disneyland's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge area, then he married his sweetheart the next year at McMenamins Anderson School in Bothell, Washington.

"I am definitely an evangelist of doing something nontraditional for the wedding rings," Reed said. "For us, this was the right choice, and we have no regrets."

They're not outliers for bucking the customary diamond ring. The jewelry tastes of today’s buyers are expanding beyond natural, mined diamonds to lab-grown alternatives and other gemstones. Many see lab-grown diamonds in particular as more affordable, ethical options.

The changing demand is echoing in the jewelry business. In the Seattle area, home to dozens of jewelers, some are adamant that lab-grown diamonds aren't worth the investment. Others embrace the trend.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything sweep into jewelry with more impact than lab diamonds," said Brant Kane, gemstone buyer at Seattle's Green Lake Jewelry Works. "They've had more impact in a shorter amount of time than anything in memory."Pros and cons

Brittany Koenig, 38, knew what she wanted for her engagement ring.

"I wanted a big stone. That was always gonna be my goal," she said in a phone interview.

Her now-husband, Dustin Koenig, 34, asked whether she'd like to be part of the shopping process. She picked out her ring from Brilliant Earth, an American chain jeweler focused on responsible sourcing.

Several factors swayed her decision to buy a lab-grown diamond. She wanted a large, radiant-cut diamond "without going hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt."

"It was a very easy choice to go lab diamond — just because of the cost benefit there," she said.

Dustin Koenig proposed to her in November 2023. They met on Bumble in April 2022.

Lab-grown diamonds are driving the average cost of an engagement ring down to $5,200 and gradually bumping the average carat weight up to 1.7 carats, according to last year's statistics by wedding brand The Knot.

More lovebirds are cashing in. In the U.S., 52% of couples surveyed by The Knot said their engagement ring incorporated a lab-grown stone, according to this year's wedding study.

"This is a trend that has not stopped growing in popularity, increasing by another 6% from last year and representing a whopping 40% growth from 2019," according to the survey.

Brittany Koenig felt that a lab-grown diamond was the more ethical and environmentally friendly choice, compared with mined diamonds.

Mined diamonds have had a negative history, including human exploitation, deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions.

The diamond industry has taken steps to address blood diamonds, or conflict diamonds, which are "rough diamonds sold by rebel groups or their allies to fund conflict against legitimate governments," according to the U.S. State Department. A global certification was instituted in 2003 to combat the trade of blood diamonds.

Meanwhile, the carbon footprint of lab-grown diamonds is a matter of debate between the natural diamond industry and lab-grown diamond producers.

China, India and the U.S. are the top three producers of lab-grown diamonds, according to last year's report by the Gemological Institute of America, a nonprofit organization.

The majority of today’s lab-grown diamonds are formed through chemical vapor deposition. It's a process where “carbon gas heats a diamond seed in a chamber, causing the carbon to stick to the seed and grow into a larger diamond,” according to the International Gem Society, an online gemology resource.

While an average of 160 kilograms of greenhouse gases are released per carat of a mined diamond, according to the International Gem Society, a polished carat of a lab-grown diamond releases 511 kilograms of greenhouse gases.

But the mining of a limited resource such as natural diamonds and the energy it takes for miners to extract those gemstones means the process is far from sustainable, according to the International Gem Society.

While natural and lab-grown diamonds look the same, they’re different investments.

Larry Azose, an independent jewelry appraiser in Seattle, said a lab-grown diamond is visually "indistinguishable from a mined diamond."

While it is considered beautiful and durable, "a lab-grown diamond is not a gem," Azose said, because it isn't rare. "Personally, I see no value in them."

While a natural diamond usually retains 25% to 50% of its value, “by some estimates, lab-grown diamonds may hold little to no resale value,” according to BriteCo, an insurance technology company that specializes in jewelry.

That may not matter to younger buyers.

"The current generation does not value necessarily the expense and the kind of show that it implied before — that display of wealth," Azose said.

He described natural diamond prices as “depressed” right now, due to softened demand, the abundance of lab-grown diamonds and other factors.

On top of lab-grown diamonds, Azose is also seeing more sapphire engagement rings come across his desk. "It's a definite alternative," he said.

For her part, Brittany Koenig said she is thrilled with her lab-grown diamond ring. She married her groom at Renton's Hyatt Regency Lake Washington in October 2024.

Even if its resale value is lower than a natural diamond, "no one comes into a marriage expecting to resell their ring," she said.'It's a unique situation in jewelry'

At Green Lake Jewelry Works, Kane, the gemstone buyer, introduced lab-grown diamonds to the inventory roughly 10 years ago. In a tech hub such as Seattle, he thought people would appreciate the human-made product.

"Boy, I was not wrong," he said in a phone interview. "We never looked back, really."

For patrons of the company's studios in Seattle's Northgate district and Bellevue, the decision to go with a natural or lab-grown diamond often comes down to cost.

"Price is a huge driver," Kane said. "They'll come in and go, 'They look the same? Oh. Well, why would we want to do $20,000 when we can do $4,000?'"

Instead, he's found himself talking clients out of "overbuying." For example, a $10,000 budget can secure an 8-carat lab-grown diamond — and Kane has sold a couple — but he wants his customers to buy jewelry they're comfortable wearing.

One disadvantage of the lab-grown diamonds is their genericness, he said. With natural diamonds, "they're 2 billion years old," Kane said. "It's kind of a miracle they even were created 2 miles down in the earth and then managed to make it up so we can find them."

To stand out, some clients are now buying natural diamonds in lower color grades because they can't be recreated in a lab.

Kane, a five-decade industry veteran, once owned a gemstone company, and, in his opinion, "it's a unique situation in jewelry. I've never seen it before," he said. "People are buying so differently."

Andrea Butler, 32, and her fiancé, Sean Pattison, 33, looked at rings together in January at Green Lake Jewelry Works. It was important to Butler to shop at a small local business.

Pattison told Butler that he would have bought her a natural gemstone if her heart was set on it, she said, "but I don't think I would have been comfortable with him spending quite that much."

Instead, she opted for a lab-grown diamond because it meant she got a high-quality, large gemstone "for a better price point," she said in a phone interview.

"I wanted something that I could feel comfortable wearing and not have any kind of guilt when I looked at it all the time about the ethics behind it," Butler said.

The couple got engaged at a Walla Walla vineyard in July after meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2022. Their wedding is set for May in Portugal's Douro Valley.Natural diamonds

Despite lab-grown diamonds' burgeoning popularity, several Seattle jewelers are sticking with tradition.

"As a high-end jewelry store, we don't sell lab-grown diamonds," said Richard Servis, general manager and diamond buyer at downtown Seattle's Turgeon Raine Jewelers. "They have really no value."

Servis, who has worked in the industry for decades, watched the lab-grown diamond market evolve. He said, 15 years ago, the public couldn't buy high-grade lab-grown diamonds, though that's since changed.

"There's a lot of it in the market now," he said. "Over the last 10 years, we've seen these prices dramatically come down from where they started."

Servis estimates that 99% of the engagement rings sold at his business feature natural diamonds, though he gets the occasional requests for ruby and sapphire center pieces.

"I find that most young couples, actually given the choice, would still rather buy a natural diamond because of its rarity," he said.

Seferiana Day, 40, sports a ring featuring natural diamonds that were passed down to her now-husband Kreg Hasegawa, 50, from his grandmother.

Her ring was designed with the help of Menashe & Sons Jewelers in West Seattle.

"I love the idea that it was kind of vintage, and that it was from the family," Day said in a phone interview.

Outside of that, Day would have wanted another gemstone, such as turquoise, to avoid any ethical dilemmas around sourcing natural diamonds.

She married Hasegawa last month at Seattle restaurant Canlis. After meeting in 2018 through the Washington Technology Industry Association, Hasegawa proposed to Day in April.

Ultimately, she said she believes the most important factor to modern couples in choosing a ring is "really being unique to yourself.

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