"Diamonds are a girl's best friends.. "

"Diamonds are for ever.. "

Popular sayings about ladies and diamonds are many. Women's love for diamonds has been talked about many a time. However, real diamonds may not always be affordable. Not everyone can celebrate an occasion with a pair of diamond earrings or a diamond ring. But don't we all love the look and feel of a diamond? Well, there is a solution for this dilemma faux diamonds.

Technology has enabled man to produce diamonds manually, known as faux diamonds, that look and feel exactly like real diamonds, but at much more cheaper costs. Consequently, faux diamonds are available at highly affordable rates. Faux diamonds are known by several names, such as lab-made diamonds, man-made diamonds and imitation diamonds. Faux diamonds look so much like real diamonds that it is very difficult to distinguish between the two. Only a highly trained person can differentiate the two, and even then, in certain cases, a microscope or other equipments might be required.

Initially, when faux diamonds were introduced, they were looked down upon. Later, as the prices of diamonds began shooting up, as did the prices of almost all commodities, out of reach of the middle- and low-income group, faux diamonds began to be accepted. Just as the invention of cultured pearls brought about a new trend in the pearl jewellery industry, faux diamonds have revolutionized the diamond jewellery industry.

There are different kinds of faux diamonds available in the market today, from Cubic Zirconia (CZ) to Moissanite. There are a number of ways in which faux diamonds can be produced. These stones are priced depending upon the type of manufacturing process used and their qualities. However, they are usually far less expensive than original diamonds.

Once one has decided on the budget for purchasing jewellery, there is a wide range of jewellery to choose from. Faux diamond set in metal offers the look and feel of diamond at highly affordable rates. If, however, one is looking for slightly better quality, faux diamonds set in gold and silver is available. A bit more expensive than jewellery set in ordinary metal, it is more durable, and the stones used in it are of better quality and cut. Such jewellery often looks more real and professionally made.

Quality tests carried out on faux diamonds have proved that they are as good as real diamonds. These tests include a test of brilliance, refractive index, fire, luster and hardness, among others. Here, the brilliance test refers to allowing light to enter into a stone and studying the amount of light that is reflected back, and the fire test refers to allowing light to enter the stone and studying the ability of the stone to break this light down into various colours. At times, faux diamonds have been found to outperform diamonds in these quality tests! Moissanite, a type of faux diamond, ranked higher than an original diamond when brilliance, fire and luster were tested. In case of hardness, it ranked only slightly lower than an original diamond. In fact, so many jewelers were unable to differentiate Moissanite from original diamonds that a specialized instrument had to be designed for this very purpose!

Why should one go for faux diamonds? First and foremost, they offer the gorgeous real-diamond look that very few can tell apart with the naked eye, that too within a limited budget. Apart from this, they offer several other benefits, such as: