How Gen Z and Millennials Buy Lab Grown Diamonds

Yes, and the split by age is the story. BriteCo, an insurance and appraisal firm that tracks hundreds of thousands of jewellery data points, reports that about two thirds of Gen Z engagement ring buyers now choose a lab grown centre stone, while Millennials divide close to evenly between lab grown and mined.² The younger the buyer, the more decisively they favour lab grown.

Zoom out to all shoppers and the category has already tipped. The Knot 2026 Real Weddings Study, based on 10,474 United States couples, found lab grown centre stones in 61 percent of engagement rings, a 239 percent increase since 2020, having passed the 50 percent mark for the first time in 2024.¹ Gen Z now accounts for 41 percent of the wedding market, so their preference is not a niche. It is the centre of gravity.

Consultancy McKinsey has been quoted, through Fortune and AOL, saying that about half of Millennial and Gen Z couples pick a lab grown ring.⁴ We flag that as a secondary citation, because the original McKinsey report is not publicly posted. The primary studies from The Knot and BriteCo point the same direction, and they are the numbers this report leans on.

Gen Z buys the most lab grown, Millennials are close behind, and both are pulling the whole market with them. The clearest way to see the shift is the climb in lab grown share of engagement ring centre stones over six wedding seasons.

The two leading studies measure slightly different things, and it is worth keeping them apart. The Knot tracks the centre stone of engagement rings and reports 61 percent lab grown. BriteCo tracks a broader base and puts lab grown at 47.7 percent of all engagement rings and 42.1 percent of all diamond jewellery, over a window running from 2019 to mid 2025.² Different denominators, same direction. Neither contradicts the other.

Three reasons stack up: value, values, and a relaxed view of what makes a diamond real. A lab grown diamond is the same carbon crystal as a mined one, graded on the same scale, at a fraction of the price. Younger buyers priced that in early.

On values, the age gap is measurable. In a nationally representative survey of 1,000 United States adults aged 20 to 40, fielded in mid 2025, sustainability was a priority for 88 percent of Gen Z versus 81 percent of Millennials.³ On the flip side, when The Knot asked whether it mattered that the stone be natural, only 22 percent of Gen Z said yes, against 28 percent of Millennials.¹ The younger the buyer, the less origin anxiety.

Read the table as a gradient, not a wall. Millennials are not lab grown holdouts. They adopt at roughly half and prefer lab grown at high rates; Gen Z simply sits further along every axis. The direction of travel is consistent across every measure, which is why the market keeps tipping.

Into a bigger stone, almost every time. This is the most misread part of the shift. Lab grown is cheaper per carat, so a natural assumption is that couples spend less. The data says the opposite. Budgets held roughly steady and the diamonds grew.

BriteCo found the average lab grown centre stone grew from 1.31 carats in 2019 to 2.45 carats in 2025, a gain of 87 percent, while the average engagement ring price drifted down only modestly.² The Knot puts average lab grown spend at about 4,600 US dollars against roughly 7,600 US dollars for a mined ring.¹ Couples did not pocket the full gap. They reinvested most of it in size and quality.

The old benchmark did not survive this generation either. The idea that a ring should cost two or three months of salary was a marketing line, not a law. Buyers now spend closer to 17 percent of annual income, and 61 percent call the three month rule unreasonable in the current economy.⁵ We cover that shift in depth in our report on why the two month salary rule is dead, and the size reallocation in buyers choosing bigger stones over savings.

Socially, collaboratively, and with far less surprise than the older script. The clean floor drop proposal is fading. In the 2025 Helzberg survey, 84 percent of Gen Z proposers said their partner had shown them the ring they wanted, against 75 percent of Millennials, and most couples now expect to choose the ring together.³

Research happens on a phone. Social media informs 79 percent of Gen Z ring shoppers versus 63 percent of Millennials, and the platform gap is starkest on TikTok, which reaches 32 percent of Gen Z versus 13 percent of Millennials.³ Customisation is a stronger pull for Gen Z, 34 percent versus 28 percent, and moissanite gets a look from 63 percent of Gen Z as they weigh options. Younger buyers arrive informed, having already compared specifications and prices before they ever contact a seller.

For a seller, this rewrites the job. When a buyer already knows the carat, colour, clarity, and cut they want, the winning move is an honest, certified quote, not a showroom pitch. That is why independent grading matters more than ever to this cohort, a point we make in our guide to choosing a lab diamond provider.

Honestly, no one can say with precision, and that gap is the point. The strongest figures in this report, from The Knot, BriteCo, and Helzberg, are drawn from United States samples. No public survey isolates Gen Z or Millennial lab grown adoption inside Canada. Market summaries describe Canada as an early adopter served by online native, value conscious buyers in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, but that is a narrative, not a percentage.

Stating the gap plainly is the point of a report like this. The generational move to lab grown is real, large, and well documented south of the border. The Canadian chapter is still being written, and we would rather measure it than guess at it.