A simulant will save you a fortune , but not your face.
A colorless diamond is the most popular gemstone for an engagement ring worn daily in various settings: formal, casual, or intimate. This is also why engagement rings are usually made with white metal: platinum or its bastard substitute – white gold. A colorless ring is easy to color-coordinate and can match any outfit, style, and season.
Simulants are synthetic gemstones such as Moissanite and CZs, sometimes called imitation diamonds, faux diamonds, fake diamonds, etc. Unlike lab-grown diamonds, simulants have a chemical composition and physical and optical properties vastly different from natural diamonds.
Simulants were used to swindle people in the past, but they are now simply stand-ins for natural diamonds. With the advent of lab-grown diamonds, the simulants real or perceived value practically evaporated.
Other viable diamond substitutes are natural gemstones – Spinels, Topazes, Sapphires, Zircons, and others.
Spinel is a natural gemstone that comes in every color of the rainbow. White spinel is colorless, but light-blue or light-grey varieties are popular center stones for engagement rings. Due to its excellent hardness (8 on Mohs scale), spinel works exceptionally well as a diamond substitute.
A spinel’s girdle can be left exposed without worrying that it will get chipped immediately. Spinel works well in five- or three-stone engagement rings, as well as solitaires.
Precious red spinels have long been mistaken for rubies.
For example, the Black Prince’s ruby mounted in front of the British Imperial State Crown turned out to be red spinel. Recently spinel was added as of August’s second birthstone. Thanks to its array of colors ranging from red, orange, pink, purple, and lavender to black, spinel is a jewelry designer’s dream.
Light blue is a neutral color closest to colorless, which creates a sense of calm and relaxation. That’s why Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter all have blue logos.
A variety of beryl with light blue color – an aquamarine has exceptional luster and clarity. It is high on the list of diamond alternatives. The calming color of the stone is associated with a good marriage.
Aquamarine is a precious natural stone with a rich history predating the Roman Empire, highly prized for thousands of years. It comes in various cool shades – from pale blue to deep ultramarine.
Aquamarine is typically much lighter than a sapphire yet warmer than a spinel’s cold and steely blue. The aquamarine color is very calming and subdued, similar to the tone of a fancy blue diamond. Aquamarine is a moderately priced, widely available, and well-known gemstone.
Aquamarine is an excellent choice for bridal jewelry – earrings, necklaces, crowns, etc., to be worn at the wedding.
Before gem labs populated the Earth, zircon was the most common diamond impersonator. Zircon is relatively hard (7.5 on Mohs scale) and has exceptional fire due to its strong dispersion. Naturally tinted yellow-brown zircons look exactly like low-color Brazilian diamonds common until South African diamonds were discovered.
Colorless zircon is known for its brilliance and flashes of multicolored light called fire.
Topaz is durable, has a lot of fire and brilliance, and is very inexpensive. It looks equally good as a brilliant-cut – such as round, oval, cushion, or step-cut emerald. In nature, topaz comes in various colors, such as light gray, baby blue, light brown, taupe, or pale yellow.
The colorless topazes are nuked to induce the familiar bright-blue color. The irradiation results in a permanent color and leaves no radioactive residue.
Deep pink or red variety called Precious topaz or Imperial topaz is costly.
Pro: Exceptional hardness, vivid colors, prestige.
Con: In colorless variety – glassy, lack of brilliance and fire, in any color – expensive.
Trace elements cause corundum to turn blue, yellow, green, orange, pink, purple, and even red. Red corundum is a precious gemstone called ruby.
Depending on color saturation and origin, sapphires can be extremely expensive. Most people are familiar with blue sapphires, but they also can be colorless, which is the least expensive variety. Few colorless sapphires are left as-is; they are typically heated to produce a more desirable blue color.
Colorless sapphires have a dull, glassy look because corundum is not good at bending light or breaking it into spectral colors because of low dispersion. A colorless sapphire’s luster is inferior to the pure adamantine luster of a diamond. It appears blurry, washed out, and cannot be confused with a diamond.
Colorless sapphire is a poor choice when compared to other gemstones, either natural or synthetic. Light blue sapphires, on the other hand, are very affordable and attractive stones.
Pro: Hardness, dispersion.
Con: Man-made, double refraction, pleochroism.
Moissanite is lab-grown silicon carbide. In nature, small quantities of silicon carbide were found in meteorites. Moissanite was named after Nobel prize winner Henry Moissan who proved that it is a new mineral. It was not used in jewelry until 1998 when a North Carolina-based R&D lab synthesized Moissanite.
The original moissanite was not very pretty. It had a strong greenish-yellow tint on top of strong double refraction. However, after the Charles & Colvard patent expired in 2016, the old murky moissanite quickly gave way to the new, pure white material. It remains unclear whether Charles & Colvard were unable or unwilling to produce white material during the decades they held the patent.
Modern moissanite and, in particular, Leon Mege Blonde moissanite does not have a yellow or green overtone; it is absolutely white. There is no grading system similar to a diamond’s 4C’s for moissanite; they are graded solely by color. Each moissanite vendor claims superior cut and clarity. This is a superficial claim due to the low cost of the rough material. Producing an excellent cut is easy when preserving the weight is not an object.
Leon Mege Blonde moissanite is superior to other moissanite brands because our cutters have an overwhelmingly better experience and knowledge. Faceting silicon carbide to look like a natural diamond requires slightly different angles. This is due to the difference in the optical properties of moissanite. Collection-color Blonde moissanite is a rough equivalent of GIA D-E color in diamonds. Production grade is F-G, Commercial grade is H-I.
A common thought when considering moissanite is whether or not the gemstone will pair well with diamond accents. Moissanites look beautiful when set in rings featuring diamond accents. The image above features oval moissanite set in a diamond-accented three-stone setting. Surprise, surprise – China produces more than 80 percent of the world’s silicon carbide.
Moissanite has 9.25 hardness on the Mohs hardness scale – by far the hardest mineral except for a diamond. It has minimal cleavage, so it will not chip easily, and it is very safe to use and wear.
Pro: Cheap, plentiful, reasonably hard, diamond-like in step cuts.
Con: Unnaturally white, synthetic.
Cubic Zirconia or CZ, the abbreviation of its chemical composition, is hardly the most romantic name for a gemstone. CZ is a hard (8.5 on the Mohs scale), single-refractive gem. It means that it does not have the “doubling effect” of moissanite.
Natural crystals of cubic zirconia were found in nature in microscopic grains by two German mineralogists in 1937. In the 70s Soviet scientists working on a laser capable of obliterating the US accidentally synthesized cubic zirconia.
The production of pseudo-diamonds named “Fianit” for the Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Science(FIAN) soon ensued. However, the Politburo, concerned with the new stone’s sales cutting into the lucrative diamond trade, missed the opportunity to corner the market.
Western and Asian producers seized the opportunity, and soon generic CZs flooded the markets. Early CZs were often contaminated with undissolved flux remnants that were causing the stones to turn yellow with time. Modern CZs will not yellow or become cloudy.
CZs’ high dispersion is responsible for a significant amount of “fire” – a rainbow-like color separation of the light exiting the stone. Because of it, a CZ has more fire than a diamond. But CZs’ lower refractive index results in a substandard brilliance with less contrast resembling a diamond with a strong fluorescence.
However, since step-cuts have less brilliance and sparkle, an emerald- or an Asscher-cut CZ looks very diamond-like. CZs’ tell-tale brightness that makes it unnaturally white can be masked with a thin layer of tinted coating, similar to the coating on a pair of sunglasses. This coat is not stable and scratches off easily.
CZs go by a multitude of names born of creative marketing, some more deceptive than others. “Diamonique,” used by the QVC shopping network, is an example of such shameless branding.
Others, such as Diamond Nexus Labs, Russian Brilliants, Carat.cc, Sona Diamond, Signity Diamonnique, Lannite, Fianit, Van Graff, Zironite, Amora, and many more are vying for a market share, falsely claiming their brand is different from others. There is no evidence that they are.
Pro: Colorless, natural, moderately priced.
Cons: Relatively soft, obscure, tend to have a slight pinkish overtone.
Charles Upham Shephard discovered danburite, and it is still mined there today. Danburite usually ranges from colorless to very light pink, but sometimes light yellow or brown. It is known for its excellent transparency and clarity. Danburite is a reasonably hard mineral measuring 7 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale.
Its refractive index (6.30 to 6.36) is in the same range as tourmaline.
