If you sell diamonds, you probably saw a headline this week saying the industry just banned the phrase lab grown. That is not what happened. Something real did happen, though, and it will reach your product pages and your paperwork eventually.
What CIBJO actually approved
Meeting in Vicenza, Italy on September 7, 2026, after the close of the Centenary CIBJO Congress, the Board of Directors of the World Jewellery Confederation approved a recommendation from its Diamond Commission and its Coloured Stone Commission. The recommendation: revise the Blue Books so that the word synthetic becomes the sole descriptor for a created product with the same chemical composition, physical properties and structure as its naturally occurring counterpart.
CIBJO also did two things that most coverage skipped.
First, the Board acknowledged that laboratory-grown and laboratory-created are consumer marketing terms accepted in certain jurisdictions. Second, it recognized that national law or regulation takes precedence where those laws apply. CIBJO's position is that when you communicate to an international audience, synthetic is the least ambiguous word available.
The Blue Books are the industry's nomenclature standards, not statutes. CIBJO has maintained them for close to a century. Retailers, labs and trade bodies choose to follow them because a shared vocabulary is what lets a stone described in Antwerp mean the same thing in Los Angeles.
Why the vote was contentious
Diamond Commission president Udi Sheintal argued the change is about accuracy rather than marketing, telling the Vicenza audience that consumers need precision to know what they are buying. Confederation president Gaetano Cavalieri described the Sunday commission debate as emotional, and said the process had run for more than a year following the 2025 Paris congress.
Some lab grown industry figures asked CIBJO to delay the decision. CIBJO proceeded, and Cavalieri publicly invited critics to join the organization and participate. Because each Blue Book is treated as a living document, the language can be revisited.
CIBJO now joins bodies including the London Diamond Bourse and the African Diamond Producers Association in recommending synthetic exclusively.
What did not change in the United States
Nothing about U.S. law changed on September 7.
Current FTC guidance permits a properly qualified descriptor. That includes laboratory-grown, laboratory-created, manufacturer-created, synthetic, or another word or phrase of like meaning. The requirement is that the disclosure makes clear the stone was not mined, and that the product has essentially the same optical, physical and chemical properties as the mined stone whose name is being used.
Note the direction of the requirement. The FTC is policing whether the consumer is misled, not which of several accurate words you chose. A page that says "1.50 ctw lab grown diamond studs" with the disclosure visible next to the price is compliant. A page that says "1.50 ctw diamond studs" and buries lab grown in a size chart is not, regardless of vocabulary.
The American Gem Trade Association has said it intends to keep pressing the FTC to revisit its 2018 treatment of the term synthetic, and the next Jewelry Guides revision is expected around 2028. Until that happens, U.S. sellers have a choice of terms and an obligation to be clear.
The practical to-do list
This is where the story matters for anyone actually running a counter or a website.
Product pages. Decide on one internal vocabulary and use it consistently. Whatever word you lead with, the disclosure has to sit where a buyer sees it before they add to cart, not in a collapsed tab. If you sell internationally, consider carrying both: laboratory-grown for the local consumer and synthetic in the specification block.
Invoices and receipts. This is the document that follows the piece for decades. Write the origin plainly. I have seen invoices from 2018 that say "diamond, 1.00 ct" for a stone that was grown in a reactor. That is now somebody else's insurance problem, and eventually somebody's estate problem.
Appraisals. An appraisal that does not state origin is not an appraisal, it is a guess with letterhead. Any qualified appraiser writing a document today should identify the stone as natural or as a synthetic or laboratory-grown product, cite the report if one exists, and value it against the correct market. The two markets do not track each other.
Grading reports. Keep the report with the stone and reference the report number on the invoice. A grading report from a recognized lab states origin on its face. That is your cleanest defense against a future dispute.
Staff training. This is the part that gets skipped and causes the most damage. Your team needs one script. If a customer asks whether a synthetic diamond is a real diamond, the honest answer is that it is chemically and optically diamond, it was manufactured rather than mined, and the market prices those two things very differently. Both halves of that sentence matter.
Consumer trust. Nobody sues over the word choice. They sue, or leave a review, when they learn later that a fact was available and nobody told them. Terminology fights are an industry sport. Disclosure is the actual obligation.
My read as a gemologist
Synthetic is technically the correct term, and it has been for a century in colored stones. We have said synthetic emerald, synthetic sapphire and synthetic ruby without controversy for generations. Diamonds got softer language because the category needed a consumer friendly launch.
I also understand why growers hate the word. In everyday American English, synthetic carries a whiff of fake, and a manufactured diamond is not fake. It is diamond. The disagreement is really about whether standards bodies should use the scientifically precise word or the commercially comfortable one.
You do not have to resolve that argument to do your job. Tell people exactly what they are buying, in writing, every time. Every rule under discussion is just a longer way of saying that.
