My answer: probably less than many in the industry hope.
To understand why, we need to stop thinking for a moment as gemologists, producers or jewelers, and try to enter the mind of the consumer.
First of all: what has actually changed?
On September 7, 2026, at the close of its Centenary Congress in Vicenza, the CIBJO Board of Directors approved a recommendation: in its Blue Books, "synthetic" should become the sole descriptor for a created product with the same chemical composition, physical properties and structure as its natural counterpart. When communicating to an international audience, "synthetic" is recommended as the most unambiguous term.
At the same time, CIBJO explicitly recognizes that "laboratory-grown" and "laboratory-created" remain accepted consumer marketing terms in certain jurisdictions, and that national laws and regulations take precedence.
In the United States, in fact, the Federal Trade Commission continues to allow terms such as "laboratory-grown", "laboratory-created" and "synthetic" for products that have essentially the same optical, physical and chemical properties as a mined diamond, provided the consumer clearly understands the stone was not mined.
So we are not looking, at least for now, at a universal labeling change imposed on global retail. But the more interesting question is another one: if tomorrow everyone really called them "synthetic diamonds", would the consumer stop buying them?
I do not think so.
Why does the consumer buy a lab-grown diamond?
Not because they love the words "lab-grown". They buy because they see an object that preserves most of the imagery built around the diamond: brilliance, luxury, status, romance, engagement, stone size, desirability. But at a radically lower price.
And this is the central point. The average consumer is not making a gemological evaluation. They are making a perceived value evaluation. And the ratio between what they see and what they pay is extremely favorable.
The American numbers are already very clear
Here we need to be precise, because different sources measure different things.
The Knot's Real Weddings Study found that in 2025 lab-grown diamonds accounted for 61% of center stones in engagement rings purchased in the US among surveyed couples.
BriteCo, using real appraisal data, reports that in the first half of 2026, 51% of newly appraised engagement rings had a lab-grown center stone, up from 6% in 2019 and 47% across 2025.
Different methodologies, so the numbers are not directly comparable. But the signal is unambiguous: lab-grown is now mainstream in American bridal. That is the data point that matters.
And it is not only America
The category is structuring itself in the Emirates too. In 2025 the UAE traded 76.9 million carats of lab-grown diamonds, up 91.5% year on year, worth about 1.3 billion dollars. In August 2026 DMCC even created a dedicated lab-grown diamond vertical.
This does not mean the Emirati consumer automatically prefers lab-grown over natural. It means we are far beyond the curiosity phase. There are now supply chains, brands, retailers and infrastructure built around the category. A terminology change therefore arrives after the market has already formed.
Is "synthetic" a weaker word? Yes, probably.
"Laboratory-grown" sounds technological. "Cultivated" sounds almost organic. "Synthetic" carries a colder association and, for many consumers, can evoke something artificial or less precious.
So I do not think the effect will be literally zero. On a poorly informed client, especially at first contact, the word can have a psychological impact. But I consider it unlikely to reverse a market transformation this advanced.
Because once the consumer understands that it is still a diamond with essentially the same optical, physical and chemical properties as the natural one, the choice quickly returns to: what do I get for my budget?
The real advantage of lab-grown is not the name
It is the ratio between price and perception. Take the United States again. According to BriteCo, in 2025 the median sales price of an engagement ring with a natural diamond was about $12,961. For an engagement ring with a lab-grown diamond it was about $4,557. Meanwhile the median center stone size has doubled, from 1.01 carats in 2019 to 2.0 carats in 2025.
This is exactly what the consumer sees. With the same budget I can have more carats, better color, better clarity, more visual presence. That difference is far more powerful than a word.
The diamond carries a hundred years of imagery
This, in my view, is the most underestimated point. For decades we built around the diamond one of the strongest commercial narratives ever created. Diamond means love, success, commitment, luxury, permanence, status.
Today part of that enormous symbolic capital is inevitably transferred to lab-grown as well. Because in the consumer's eyes it remains transparent, brilliant, visually identical, recognizable as a diamond.
You can explain that the natural one formed billions of years ago and the synthetic one was produced in weeks. It is true. You can talk about geological rarity. It is true. You can talk about provenance, heritage and uniqueness. And that is precisely where I believe natural must build its future.
But the consumer's answer can still be: "I understand. But with my budget I can have a 2 carat diamond instead of a 0.80 one." And it is a perfectly rational answer.
Natural and lab-grown do not just have two origins. They have two economies.
Here, in my view, is the real strategic point that the terminology debate hides.
The price of the natural diamond has never been simply extraction cost plus margin. Historically it has been shaped by limited geological availability, supply management by the large producers, inventory decisions, international demand and the enormous symbolic value built by marketing. Even today the big producers adapt production to the market: De Beers reduced production by 12% in 2025, to 21.7 million carats, with an average realized rough price of 142 dollars per carat, down 7% on 2024.
The scarcity of natural is not only geological. It is also economic: how many diamonds reach the market at any given moment also depends on producers' decisions. That is a market price, built on the balance between scarcity, available supply and demand. Not a fake price, but not a price directly tied to industrial cost either. And it is exactly this that allowed natural diamonds to sustain a very high premium for decades. It also means the price can fall when demand weakens: according to data reported by CNBC, the average price of a 1 carat natural diamond went from $8,007 in 2021 to $3,898 today, a decline of more than 50% in five years.
The lab-grown diamond follows a different logic. It is an industrially reproducible product. There is no structural geological scarcity. As capacity grows and technology becomes more efficient, production costs tend to fall. And that is what happened: according to industry analyst Edahn Golan, wholesale lab-grown prices have declined by about 96% since 2018, still falling 13% year on year in Q2 2026, even though the pace is slowing and some categories, like the 1 carat round, show early signs of stabilization.
In short: natural is scarcity plus demand plus inventory plus branding. Lab-grown is production cost plus capacity plus competition plus retailer markup. Two different economic models. And that changes completely how each must be positioned.
The real risk for lab-grown is not being called "synthetic"
It is becoming a commodity. Production costs keep falling. Capacity keeps growing. Rarity does not exist as a structural variable. So the price of the stone faces a completely different pressure from that of a naturally scarce good.
The real risk is price competition. If two companies can produce essentially the same stone, competition progressively shifts to price. So value must migrate elsewhere: design, brand, service, retail experience, storytelling, personalization.
Lab-grown brands that build their entire communication on "2 carats for the price of 1" are building a very fragile advantage.
And natural will not recover value by verbally devaluing lab-grown. If the implicit goal of "synthetic" is to widen the perceived distance, it may work as linguistic positioning. But it is not a commercial strategy. Natural must build its own positive value: origin, provenance, rarity, uniqueness, geological history, collectability, heritage, emotional permanence. It is far more powerful to say "this diamond exists only once" than to say "that one is synthetic". The first builds value. The second builds comparison.
The consumer has already segmented the market
My reading is that natural and lab-grown will not necessarily eliminate each other. They are progressively separating by function.
Natural diamond: heritage, premium engagement, important milestones, collectability, provenance, legacy.
Lab-grown diamond: fashion, self purchase, travel jewellery, larger carats, statement pieces, everyday diamonds, creative experimentation.
It is not an absolute division. Lab-grown engagement rings and natural fashion jewellery both exist. But as a portfolio architecture it is far more useful than the old war over "which is the real diamond".
So: will calling it "synthetic" change anything?
My prediction: something, yes, but much less than it may seem from inside the industry. It may change the first impression. It may help natural differentiate linguistically. It may make communication clearer.
But it will hardly erase the price difference, the availability of large carats, the visual quality, the generational shift, or the now massive presence of lab-grown in retail.
Because in the end we must remember one fundamental thing. The consumer does not buy the terminology our industry uses. They buy how they feel when they wear the jewel. They buy the brilliance, the size, the design, the meaning, the pride of wearing it, the reaction of others. And above all they buy what they believe holds the most value for them.
We can call it laboratory-grown. Laboratory-created. Synthetic. But if the consumer looks at their hand, sees a beautiful two carat diamond and feels they made the right purchase, the terminology battle will hardly change that feeling.
The real challenge, for natural and lab-grown, will not be deciding what to call themselves. It will be giving the client two reasons strong enough, and different enough, to desire them both.