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One of the biggest online diamond retailers, James Allen, lets you create your lab-grown diamond earrings. That means you get to pick your diamonds, style, and metal for the perfect pair of diamond stud earrings. Learn why you should do that and how in our step-by-step guide to creating your lab-grown diamond earrings at James Allen in 2023.
Most of the best online diamond retailers sell preset jewelry, also called ready-to-ship. With pre-set jewelry, you choose between various jewelry styles that come in various metal types and carat sizes. The diamond, however, is pre-selected.
That’s a problem because the pre-selected diamonds are often of lower quality and will not give you the full amount of diamond sparkle.
The product description will often not disclose the most important diamond quality aspects. Instead, you’ll notice only the diamond color and diamond clarity listed. Diamond cut quality, the most important of all the lab-grown diamond 4Cs, is very often not mentioned. Diamond cut is by far the most significant contributor to the diamond’s “sparkle,” which in turn is the essence of a diamond.
That’s why we at LabGrownCarats.com always recommend that you create your lab-grown diamond earrings rather than buying a ready-to-ship pair of diamond earrings with sub-par diamonds.
By customizing your diamond earrings, you will be able to browse through hundreds and thousands of diamonds while comparing and reading the grading reports to ensure that you end up with the best possible diamond within your budget.
It might seem a bit daunting to customize your diamond earrings, and that’s why we’ve written this step-by-step guide on how to create your lab-grown diamond earrings at James Allen.
We promise you will be pleased that you choose to create your very own diamond earrings!
SALES ALERT! : 30% off jewelry + 50% off engagement rings + 10% off lab diamonds at James Allen!
Create your own lab-grown diamond earrings at James Allen
James Allen is one of the top-rated online diamond retailers. They offer excellent customer service, an unrivaled shopping experience, and competitive prices. In addition, they have an impressive collection of loose lab-grown diamonds to choose from – over 145,000 stones at the time of writing!
Instead of searching through thousands of diamonds to find a suitable pair, James Allen has simplified the process by suggesting lab-created diamonds in pairs, ensuring that your diamonds go well together.
James Allen has gone out of their way to make it easy to create your lab-grown diamond earrings. All you have to do is choose the diamonds (the most important step!) and then decide on the metal and setting.
In this step-by-step guide, we’ll walk you through the process.
Step 1: Choose your diamonds
The first step to designing your lab-grown diamond earrings is both the most important and most challenging. But follow the below, and it’ll be easy.
Start by selecting a pair of lab-created diamonds. As mentioned, James Allen’s lab-grown diamonds come in pairs that are carefully matched to make sure they are symmetrical in all aspects. This makes the buying process very easy.
Select your diamond shape of choice and choose color, clarity, cut, carat, and price range. In the following, we’ll briefly go through the diamond shapes and the 4Cs (cut, clarity, carat, color) and help you decide on the grades when creating your lab-grown diamond earrings.
Need to brush up on the diamond’s 4’C? Read our intro to lab-grown diamonds.
The most common diamond shape is the round brilliant diamond which has been perfected to maximize brilliance. Other popular diamond shapes include:
We choose the brilliant-shaped diamonds for our earrings because they’re great for a classic pair of diamond stud earrings – and by far the most popular.
Diamond cut
Diamond cut grade is the most critical factor in determining the “sparkle,” making diamonds unique. Diamond cut grades range from ideal to poor (the highest grade at GIA, confusingly, is excellent, but most lab diamonds are graded by IGI, which uses ideal as the best grade).
Diamonds with low cut grades typically appear glassy or dull, and even the grade very good is not at all very good. So always choose the best-cut grade.
That means that for IGI-graded lab-grown diamonds, we recommend that you don’t go below ideal cut. Compromise instead on color, clarity, or, ideally, carat.
When creating your lab-grown diamond earrings, choose the best grade for our customized diamond earrings.
Diamond color
Diamond color ranges from colorless to light yellow. Colorless diamonds receive a grade of D, which is the best grade (learn what happened to the A, B, and C diamond color grades).
The lower the grade (following the alphabet), the more yellow or brown-tinted the diamond is. However, even near colorless diamonds graded G to J will hardly have any noticeable color.
We recommend color grades F-J as suitable. However, you don’t really need a completely colorless diamond for earrings, and can even go lower in color, depending on the setting. For instance, you can easily go for a G to J color diamond with a rose or yellow gold setting. You’ll save a lot on picking a lesser color grade, and you won’t even notice any difference!
Tip: If you set your diamond in a gold setting, you should pick the I or J graded as the metal will tint the diamond color anyway.
Diamond clarity
Diamond clarity is measured from flawless (the best of all clarity grades) to included (the worst). The lower the clarity grade, the cloudier and duller the diamond will appear because multiple inclusions hinder the reflection of light and therefore have an impact on a diamond’s sparkle.
If you’re on a tight budget, a diamond in the SI1 (slightly included), VS1 (very slightly included), or VS2 categories are excellent options and the best value. These SI and VS diamonds don’t have inclusions visible to the naked eye, which means that inclusions have no or negligible impact on diamond light emission. However, SI is more of a hit-or-miss.
So pick VS1 or VS2 for the best value, but make sure to study the images and diamond video. James Allen makes these available in their diamond inspection. And stay clear of diamonds in the I’s (included) range.
Also, avoid the internally flawless and flawless grades, as these will be exceedingly expensive, and you’ll not be able to notice that they are any better. Instead, save your money to get the best diamond cut grade.
Tip: Select diamonds graded SI1 to VS2 to get the best value. Just make sure that the diamonds appear “eye-clean” in the HD images and video that reputable diamond sellers like James Allen offer.
For our earrings, we chose VS1-2.
The lab-created diamond selection at James Allen
When we searched through James Allen’s extensive lab-grown diamond selection, we found 49 results that matched our search criteria above.
When your search results are loaded, take your time going through the pictures, the 360-degree videos, Super Zoom, and, most importantly, the grading reports that give you all the diamond details.
Learn more about the grading reports at James Allen.
Step 2: Choose your earrings
After you have selected your diamonds of choice, the next step is to choose the setting and jewelry material.
Diamond earrings can be ordered in 6 types of metal: 14K yellow gold, 14K white gold, 18K yellow gold, 18K white gold, rose gold, and platinum. Pick your preference, and remember that you can go at least one color grade down if set in gold or rose gold.
Next, choose your style of earrings. We recommend the following:
- Four Prong Stud Earrings
- Three Prong Martini Style Stud Earrings
- Wire Basket Diamond Stud Earring
- Milgrain Bezel Diamond Stud Earrings.
Step 3: Complete your earrings
After choosing the earring style and metal type, you got yourself a sparkling pair of lab-grown diamond earrings! All you have to do at this point is to put in your order and get excited.
The process is simple and straightforward. But if you have any questions throughout the process, you can always chat with a trained gemologist at James Allen, who’ll happily help you out.
And there you have it. Your very own designed diamond stud earrings are made to your specifications and with much higher quality diamonds than you would get from a ready-to-ship pair. The extra few steps and a little extra wait time will be all worth it!
Remember that James Allen offers a lifetime warranty. They will repair and maintain your jewelry for a lifetime, including free prong tightening, re-polishing, rhodium plating, and cleaning services.
James Allen is also our highest-rated place to shop for lab-grown diamond engagement rings. Learn why in our guide to engagement ring shopping at James Allen.
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