Natural diamonds had a rough year—some hope to restore their shine

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Natural diamonds are losing their sparkle. What will it take to restore it? After a postpandemic surge in demand in 2021 and 2022, natural-diamond prices are down about 8% compared with the first quarter of 2020, while lab-grown diamond prices are down 75%, according to data from diamond-industry analyst Paul Zimnisky.

Lab-grown diamond prices are declining because the cost of manufacturing them keeps coming down, but weak demand is largely to blame for declining natural-diamond prices. It has been bad enough that Anglo American-owned De Beers, one of the world’s largest diamond miners, reduced its rough diamond prices by 10% to 15% at its December sale, according to industry publication Rapaport News. Industry watchers say it is rare for De Beers to cut its own pricing.

Botswana, one of the top producers of diamonds, is projecting that the country’s economy could contract by 1.7% due to the downturn in diamond sales, according to Reuters. Consumers in the U.S., the largest diamond market, are happily opting for bigger and cheaper lab-grown diamond options over mined ones. Natural-diamond jewelry sales in the U.S.

declined 0.7% through November compared with a year earlier, while lab-grown diamond-jewelry sales rose 12.5%, according to industry analyst Edahn Golan. In a 2024 survey of U.S. consumers by the Knot, an online wedding-planning platform, more than half of respondents said their engagement rings featured a lab-grown diamond as a center stone, up from 46% in 2023 and 12% in 2019.