Most people have never heard of moissanite. And the ones who have usually dismiss it the second they find out it's not a diamond.
That's the whole problem.
Moissanite is not a fake diamond. It's not a cheap knockoff. It's a completely different stone that happens to look similar to one. And because of that similarity, it's been lumped in with cubic zirconia and glass in people's minds, which is not fair to it at all.
Here's what it actually is, what it actually does, and why most people still won't choose it.
What is moissanite?
Moissanite is made of silicon carbide. It was first discovered by a Nobel Prize-winning chemist named Henri Moissan at the site of a meteorite strike in Arizona. He actually thought he'd found diamonds at first. He hadn't. He'd found something different.
Natural moissanite is extremely rare and only found in meteorites. In the late 90s, scientists figured out how to create it in a lab for use in jewellery. That's what you're buying when you buy a moissanite ring today. A lab-created stone made of silicon carbide.
It is not a diamond. It is its own thing.
The sparkle situation
Here's where it gets interesting.
Moissanite has a refractive index of 2.65, while diamond sits at 2.42. The refractive index is basically a measure of how much a stone bends light. The higher the number, the more light gets redirected back to your eye.
In simple terms, moissanite is technically brighter than a diamond.
But that's not the whole story. Moissanite also has a dispersion rating of 0.104, compared to diamond's 0.044. Dispersion is what creates those colourful rainbow flashes in a stone. Moissanite has more than twice the dispersion of a diamond.
What that means in real life is that moissanite throws a lot of colour. Under bright light or direct sun, you get intense rainbow flashes. Some people find this stunning. Others find it looks less natural, more like a disco ball. This effect becomes more prominent in larger stones.
Diamond sparkle is different. It's more white, more contained. Less intense but more classic. Lab diamonds give you balanced brilliance with subtle, primarily white light reflections. It's the kind of sparkle most people picture when they think of an engagement ring.
Neither is wrong. They just look different.
How hard is moissanite?
Pretty hard. Moissanite sits at 9.25 on the Mohs hardness scale, making it suitable for everyday wear. Diamond is a 10, which is the top of the scale. So diamond is harder, but the gap between them is small.
For daily wear, moissanite holds up well. It won't scratch easily. It won't lose its sparkle over time the way cheaper simulants like cubic zirconia do. This is a durable stone.
The price difference
This is significant.
A moissanite can cost roughly 10% of what a diamond of the same size would cost. That means a stone that looks like a 2-carat diamond on your finger, for a fraction of the price. The money you save can go toward the setting, toward travel, toward a house deposit, toward whatever matters more to you.
That's a real trade-off worth thinking about.
So why isn't everyone buying moissanite?
Because engagement rings are not just about the stone. They're about how you feel wearing it.
Decades of marketing have told us that diamonds belong on engagement rings. That logic has seeped deep into how people think about this purchase. And when a stone looks like a diamond but isn't one, a lot of people feel like they need to explain themselves.
That's not vanity. That's just being honest about how you're wired.
If any part of you would feel like you were settling, or worry what people think, or find yourself explaining your stone at dinner, then moissanite is probably not for you. That's not a character flaw. It's self-awareness.
But if you genuinely don't need a diamond to feel good about your ring? You get a beautiful, durable, incredibly sparkly stone for a fraction of the price. That's a genuinely great outcome.
Moissanite versus a lab-grown diamond
This is the comparison that actually matters for most people who are looking at moissanite.
A lab-grown diamond is chemically identical to a mined diamond. It's carbon, grown in a lab, with the same hardness and the same optical properties. It looks like a diamond because it is a diamond. It just costs significantly less than a mined one.
So if your hesitation with moissanite is that you want something that is actually a diamond, a lab-grown diamond solves that. You get the real thing at a price that makes a bigger stone possible.
If your goal is purely to get the most visual impact for the least money and you truly don't mind it not being a diamond, moissanite wins on price.
Both are solid choices. They just answer different questions.
The honest take
Moissanite is not for everyone, and that's fine. The people who choose it have made a genuine decision that they don't need a diamond on their finger to feel great about their ring. That takes more clarity than it sounds. Most of us have absorbed years of messaging about what an engagement ring is supposed to be.
If you can get there, you get a lot of ring for your money.
If you can't, no amount of logic is going to change how you feel wearing it every day. In that case, a lab-grown diamond is a smart middle ground. You get a real diamond, in a size you can actually afford, without the premium of a mined stone.
The right choice is the one you'll feel genuinely proud of.
View our full collection of beautiful lab-grown diamond engagement rings that are sure to get you excited!
Thanks for reading, Jared and Brie