What three sections of the FTC Jewelry Guides and the Commission's 2018 reasoning say about disclosing and describing lab-grown diamonds, set beside what 5 jewelers write on their own lab-grown pages, counted on 23 October 2026. This page reports; it reaches no conclusion on any jeweler's compliance.
Maison Assay finding
On 23 October 2026, 3 of 5 jewelers (Brilliant Earth, Whiteflash, Ritani) described lab-grown diamonds as real diamonds in their own voice on their lab-grown pages; none spelled out "laboratory-grown", all labelled the stones "lab grown" or "lab" in listing titles. The FTC's 2018 statement left "real" for lab-grown diamonds as an open question.
Three things bear on a listing. First, a lab-grown stone is a diamond: the Guides define a diamond by its composition, not its origin (16 CFR 23.12). Second, wording that names a stone for a laboratory-grown one should be preceded by "laboratory-grown", "laboratory-created", "[manufacturer name]-created" or a phrase of like meaning (23.25(b)). Third, the words "real", "genuine", "natural" and "precious" are called unfair or deceptive for products manufactured or produced artificially (23.27). The Commission's 2018 explanation of that third rule is where the tension sits.
In short:
| Jeweler | Listing title word | "lab grown" count | "laboratory-grown" or "-created" | "real" or "genuine" near "diamond" |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brilliant Earth | Lab Grown Diamond | 93 | 0 | 3 (0 as a question) |
| Whiteflash | Lab Diamond (cards); Lab Grown Diamond (listing page) | 47 | 0 | 4 (1 as a question) |
| Ritani | Lab-Grown Diamond | 74 | 0 | 1 (0 as a question) |
| Clean Origin | Round Lab Grown Diamond | 17 | 0 | 2 (2 as a question) |
| Blue Nile | Lab-Grown Diamond | 36 | 0 | 0 |
In its Statement of Basis and Purpose for the final revisions (pages 93 and 94), the Commission left the guidance on "real", "genuine" and "natural" unchanged because no commenter had asked to change it. It added that, after the comment period, representatives of mined-diamond and lab-grown-diamond producers had raised opposing concerns about using those words for both kinds of diamond, that the record on consumer perception was incomplete, and that it welcomed evidence on whether such terms can be used non-deceptively for lab-grown diamonds. It cautioned that using them to imply a lab-grown diamond is not an actual diamond would be deceptive. We read that as an open question, not an answer, and we have not found a later change to the text of 23.27, which we read in full on 23 October 2026.
In a warning-letter template dated 26 March 2019 and addressed to a lab-grown diamond seller, staff said that phrases such as "above-ground real diamonds" and "Real diamonds created in America" did not clearly and conspicuously disclose that the diamonds were laboratory-created, and that a disclosure on a separate page may be overlooked when it is not next to the product description. The letter is the opinion of staff, not of the Commission, and it asked the seller to describe the steps it planned; we saw no penalty in it and did not look for outcomes.
Brilliant Earth, Whiteflash, Ritani each describe lab-grown diamonds as real diamonds in sentences of their own, 7 in all on the pages we read. Clean Origin asks the question in FAQ headings and answers it elsewhere. Blue Nile never uses the word. Every jeweler labelled its stones "lab grown", "lab-grown" or "lab" in the titles of the listings we opened, and none of the five pages contained the Guides' own example words "laboratory-grown" or "laboratory-created" (0 of 5). Whether "lab-grown" is a phrase of like meaning is not addressed in the Guides text we read, so we draw no conclusion from the absence.
The Guides are the FTC's guidance, not a statute, and a single sentence on a landing page is not a legal finding. If a jeweler says lab-grown diamonds are "real", it is telling you they are diamonds, which the Guides' own definition supports. What matters to a buyer is the disclosure beside the stone you are looking at: the listing title, the certificate and the invoice should all say laboratory-grown.
On 23 October 2026, in a desktop browser, we read the text of 16 CFR 23.12, 23.25 and 23.27 on the Legal Information Institute's copy of the CFR, and extracted the text of the FTC's final Statement of Basis and Purpose and of a 2019 staff warning-letter template from the PDFs on ftc.gov. We then opened each of the five jewelers' lab-grown diamond search pages and counted, in the page's visible text, the phrases "lab grown" or "lab-grown", "laboratory-grown" or "laboratory-created", and any "real" or "genuine" within thirty characters of "diamond". A match can sit in a sentence about natural stones or in a question, so each count is stated with how many are questions and the page is the unit, not the site. We read a listing page for each jeweler to see the word used in titles. We are not lawyers, we gave no legal advice, and we did not contact anyone. The reads are held in this property's dataset registry and every number is computed from them; the next read is January 2027.
Under the FTC Jewelry Guides' definition in 16 CFR 23.12(a), a diamond is a mineral of essentially pure carbon crystallized in the isometric system. In 2018 the Commission dropped "natural" from that definition because lab-created stones with the same optical, physical and chemical properties are also diamonds.
The Guides advise disclosing clearly and conspicuously that a stone is laboratory-grown, using words such as "laboratory-grown", "laboratory-created", "[manufacturer name]-created" or a phrase of like meaning (16 CFR 23.25(b) and 23.12(c)(3)). FTC staff said in 2019 that a disclosure on a separate page may be overlooked when it is not near the product description.
We cannot answer as a legal matter. Section 23.27 of the Guides lists "real" among words that are unfair or deceptive for products produced artificially; in 2018 the Commission left that guidance unchanged, said it would be deceptive to use such words to imply a lab-grown diamond is not an actual diamond, and invited evidence on other uses. On 23 October 2026, 3 of 5 jewelers we read used the phrase "real diamonds" in their own voice.
In the listings we opened on 23 October 2026, yes: all five labelled the stone "lab grown", "lab-grown" or "lab" in the title. None of the five lab-grown pages contained the words "laboratory-grown" or "laboratory-created".
The Guides name "laboratory-grown", "laboratory-created", "[manufacturer name]-created" or a phrase of like meaning as examples. The sections we read do not address whether "lab" or "lab-grown" is a phrase of like meaning, so we make no claim either way.
FTC staff sent warning letters to lab-grown diamond sellers in 2019; we read the template, dated 26 March 2019, which expressed concern about phrases such as "above-ground real diamonds" without a clear laboratory-created disclosure. It is a staff warning, and we did not look for outcomes.