The latest trends, behind-the-scenes stories, and expert perspectives shaping the future of fine jewellery. From lab diamond innovations to design insights.
Snagging, uneven prongs, prongs too clunky for the stone, and prongs too thin to hold it. Four prong problems worth catching the day your ring arrives, plus what is normal wear versus what is a defect that needs fixing.
Bezel is the safest setting, but it is not for everyone. A low-profile basket setting with an integrated head in platinum is the next best thing: secure, snag-resistant, and beautiful. Here is how to pick a setting that holds the stone well without committing to a bezel.
Use a placeholder ring. Propose with a temporary ring (cubic zirconia in sterling silver works for photos), then choose the real one together after the yes. Roughly seven in ten women say they would not trust their partner to pick the final ring alone. Here is how the placeholder approach works.
Cut is not the shape of a diamond, it is the proportions: how the angles, depth, and symmetry let light enter the stone, bounce around, and return to your eye as sparkle. A poorly cut diamond looks dull and dead even at a high clarity or colour grade. Cut is the single most important of the 4Cs for how the stone actually looks.
Four things most people learn about oval diamonds after they buy: ovals look bigger for their carat weight, no certificate grades the cut quality, clarity is the safer place to compromise rather than colour, and the length-to-width ratio decides the look of the whole stone.
Natural diamond, lab-grown diamond, and moissanite are the three stones you will actually choose between for an engagement ring. Natural and lab-grown are chemically the same material (carbon). Moissanite is a different gemstone (silicon carbide) that costs roughly 10 to 20 percent of either diamond. Here is the AUD breakdown and how each one wears.
Slightly loose is better than slightly tight. A well-fitted ring slides over the knuckle with light resistance, sits snugly at the base of the finger, and takes a gentle wiggle to come off. If you are between sizes, size up. Resizing larger is harder than resizing smaller.
Yes, 1.5mm is too thin for a daily-wear engagement ring in gold. It bends with normal wear and needs re-shanking inside a decade. 1.8mm is the safe floor, 2mm is the comfortable choice, 2mm and wider is the minimum for pave.
Four prongs are enough for almost every engagement ring under 2 carats, as long as you get them checked once a year. Where it stops being enough is large stones, ovals over 1.5 carats, and very active hands.
The 3 month salary rule is the idea that you should spend three months of your salary on an engagement ring. It was not a tradition. It was a 1930s De Beers advertising campaign that started at one month, grew to two, then settled at three by the 1980s. You do not have to follow it.
VS2 is the smarter buy for almost every round, oval, cushion or pear under 2 carats. VS1 is worth the upgrade for step cuts (emerald, asscher) and for any stone above 2 carats. Both are eye-clean in normal viewing. Here is the full breakdown.
No. Lab-grown diamonds do not lose their sparkle, their shine, or their brilliance over time. They are the same material as a mined diamond and just as hard. When a lab diamond looks dull, the cause is a film of skin oil, soap, and lotion sitting on the stone, which cleans off in fifteen minutes.
Yes. The average engagement ring diamond is around 1 carat worldwide and 1.2 carats in Australia, so a 2 carat stone is meaningfully above average. A 2ct round measures about 8.1mm across; the same weight in an oval stretches to about 10mm long. Here is how it looks on the hand and what it costs in AUD.
Long, slim fingers carry almost any engagement ring well, but elongated shapes (oval, marquise, pear, emerald) flatter the most. Bulky rings work too. Round and square sizes need to sit at 1ct or above so the stone does not look small. Here is the full breakdown.
The most durable engagement ring setting is a low-profile bezel or a basket-style setting with six platinum prongs on a 2.2mm or wider gold band. Three design decisions made at the bench (setting style, prong count, prong metal) do most of the work.
Most engagement ring bands sit between 1.6mm and 3mm. 1.8mm reads delicate, 2mm is the most common, 2.5mm is structured, 3mm reads bold. Here is how each width looks on the finger, stacks with a wedding band, and holds up to daily wear.
Both are step cuts from the same family. An emerald is rectangular and elongates the finger. An asscher is square with deeply cropped corners and a hall-of-mirrors look. Here is how to pick, and how an asscher differs from a square emerald.
Yes. A jeweller re-shanks the ring, which means replacing part or all of the band with thicker metal. Half-shank is cheaper, full shank gives even thickness right around. Expect $300 to $1,200 AUD depending on metal and complexity.
Yes. You can use your engagement ring as your wedding ring, and many couples do. The two-ring tradition was popularised by jewellers in the twentieth century; before that a single ring was the norm. It works best when the engagement ring is designed to stand alone (lower profile, wider band, secure setting).
Carat is a unit of weight (1 carat = 0.2 grams), not size. A 1 carat round diamond measures about 6.5mm across; the same weight in an oval stretches to about 8mm. Shape, cut depth, and density all change how big a stone looks for a given carat. Here is what carat weight actually buys.
The bow tie is a dark shadow shaped like a bow tie across the middle of elongated diamond shapes (oval, pear, marquise). It happens because of how light leaks through poorly aligned pavilion facets. Every oval has at least a subtle one. Whether it ruins the stone depends on how severe it is.
The fastest at-home gold tests are the hallmark check and the magnet test, which together rule out most fakes. An acid testing kit or electronic tester gives you a precise karat reading. Vinegar, bleach, and skin-discolouration tests don't reliably tell you anything.
The most reliable at-home diamond test is a dual thermal-and-electrical tester pen. The popular fog, water, and newspaper tests give you a partial answer, and none of the home methods can tell a lab-grown diamond from a natural one.
Taylor Swift's engagement ring from Travis Kelce is an 8-carat old mine cut diamond in a hand-engraved yellow gold setting by New York jeweller Kindred Lubeck of Artifex Fine Jewelry. Industry experts have valued it between $550,000 and $1 million USD.
In Australia, the engagement ring goes on the fourth finger of the left hand, the one nicknamed the ring finger. Here's why that became the default, where the tradition is different, and what happens to the ring during and after the wedding ceremony.
Lab-grown diamonds don't get cloudy with age. Any haze you can see is a film of soap, hand cream, and skin oils sitting on the surface, and it cleans off in fifteen minutes.
Most Australian couples spend between $3,000 and $8,000 on an engagement ring, with the average sitting around $5,000. Here's what your money actually gets you at each price tier, why the old salary rules don't hold up, and how to stretch a budget further.
Give yourself 6 to 8 weeks for a made-to-order ring and 8 to 12 weeks for full custom. In-stock pieces can be ready in a week if you're up against a date. Here's how to work backwards from your proposal and when prices actually move during the year.
Most engagement rings can be resized one or two sizes up or down without trouble. Eternity bands, tension settings, and titanium can't. Here's what each kind of resize costs in Australia, how long it takes, and when replacement makes more sense.
Six prongs are slightly more secure; four prongs let in more light and read more modern. For most stones under 2 carats either is safe with annual checks. Here's how to choose based on stone size, shape, and how you actually live.
If your wedding band sits with a gap against your engagement ring, it's almost always the setting profile, not a defect. Here's what causes it, which fixes actually work (contour bands, spacers, soldering), and what each one costs in Australia.
No, not if it's a D VVS1 stone, cut well, and set in solid gold. The moissanite that looks fake online is almost always a low-grade stone in a plated setting. Here's how to tell, what to avoid, and what to say if someone asks.
If your engagement ring turned up damaged, the wrong size, or with a loose stone, Australian Consumer Law puts you in a stronger position than most sellers will admit. Here's what to document, what to say, and what each fix usually costs.
A D VVS1 moissanite stud pair in solid gold sits around $850 to $1480 AUD. An equivalent natural diamond pair starts around $8,000 and climbs from there. The diamonds look slightly whiter, the moissanite throws more rainbow flash, and in normal indoor light very few people can pick them apart by eye.
Yes. Moissanite earrings give you serious sparkle at a fraction of the cost of diamond studs, and because earrings sit protected on your earlobes, moissanite's durability isn't really tested the way it is on a ring. Here's what to spend, which shapes work best, and what to look for.
GIA stopped grading lab-grown diamonds on the 4Cs scale in October 2025. They now use a simpler Premium or Standard rating, with stones below the threshold returned ungraded. Here's what changed, why, and whether it affects what you should buy.
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