Opinions on Vrai diamond studs

[bluewave21]

Hi all,
I’m interested in buying 4+ ctw round diamond studs from Vrai of ideal/excellent cut. I understand that the resale value isn’t near what a mined diamond would be—I’m going big with my first purchase so I won’t want to upgrade or resell later. My question is moreso regarding the quality of Vrai diamonds. (The certificates online are not GIA and other posts have questioned their color grading when taken to a jeweler.) I’m not against the “pink or brown tint” mentioned on other posts, but I want to make sure I’m buying good quality.
Thanks in advance!

 

[AprilBaby]

My limited experience was brown tint. Their jewelry was minimalist so it wasn’t very durable. Have you priced buying the stones from rarecaret?

 

[nyc_sparkler]

Hi! I have a lot of feedback on this topic. I bought 3.6 ctw studs from Vrai late last year and ended up returning them for two main reasons. First, they showed more color than I expected. I have an H engagement ring stone (AGS graded from WF) and also bought H from Vrai. They did appear more tinted than my engagement ring, maybe because their stones are on the brown side vs earth-mined stones showing more hints of yellow. I have to admit they faced up pretty white, but I couldn’t get past the color from the side. Secondly, the stones were set poorly. One of them wasn’t even set straight. When I looked at the setting from the side, the gallery rail wasn’t parallel to the top of the stone. It was super noticeable. And on both earrings, the posts were slightly not perpendicular (!), and one also had a kink in it (!). Considering the price of the setting, which wasn’t even platinum, and the extent of the issues, I decided it wasn’t worth trying to send them back to be fixed so I returned them. I ended up buying loose stones elsewhere (IGI F color, H&A) to be set here in NYC.
I will say that I liked the actual design of the Vrai settings. Nice delicate claw prongs, seemed durable, and the setting sat nicely on my ear. And the one-stop-shop nature of Vrai made the transaction easy. Also, regarding picking stones, this is probably obvious but you will have many more options from Vrai if you buy two individual earrings versus one of their matched pairs. This was important to me because I bought two of their H&A cuts (I figured this was the only way to ensure cut was nice since they do show a H&A image on their wonky in-house cert). But they never paired up two H&A stones on their stone picking site even when they clearly matched very closely, so I selected them manually. BTW their inventory doesn’t seem to have been refreshed much the last few weeks. I look occasionally out of curiosity and they really seem to have very few high color stones of the best cut in larger sizes. Let me know if you have other questions!

 

[bluewave21]

My limited experience was brown tint. Their jewelry was minimalist so it wasn’t very durable. Have you priced buying the stones from rarecaret?

Thank you so much for your response. I had never looked at rarecarat before, and when I just did they have many more options and better pricing. Appreciate your help.

 

[bluewave21]

Hi! I have a lot of feedback on this topic. I bought 3.6 ctw studs from Vrai late last year and ended up returning them for two main reasons. First, they showed more color than I expected. I have an H engagement ring stone (AGS graded from WF) and also bought H from Vrai. They did appear more tinted than my engagement ring, maybe because their stones are on the brown side vs earth-mined stones showing more hints of yellow. I have to admit they faced up pretty white, but I couldn’t get past the color from the side. Secondly, the stones were set poorly. One of them wasn’t even set straight. When I looked at the setting from the side, the gallery rail wasn’t parallel to the top of the stone. It was super noticeable. And on both earrings, the posts were slightly not perpendicular (!), and one also had a kink in it (!). Considering the price of the setting, which wasn’t even platinum, and the extent of the issues, I decided it wasn’t worth trying to send them back to be fixed so I returned them. I ended up buying loose stones elsewhere (IGI F color, H&A) to be set here in NYC.
I will say that I liked the actual design of the Vrai settings. Nice delicate claw prongs, seemed durable, and the setting sat nicely on my ear. And the one-stop-shop nature of Vrai made the transaction easy. Also, regarding picking stones, this is probably obvious but you will have many more options from Vrai if you buy two individual earrings versus one of their matched pairs. This was important to me because I bought two of their H&A cuts (I figured this was the only way to ensure cut was nice since they do show a H&A image on their wonky in-house cert). But they never paired up two H&A stones on their stone picking site even when they clearly matched very closely, so I selected them manually. BTW their inventory doesn’t seem to have been refreshed much the last few weeks. I look occasionally out of curiosity and they really seem to have very few high color stones of the best cut in larger sizes. Let me know if you have other questions!

Thanks so much for this info! I think I may opt for rare carat as mentioned by the other post. They have an option where they will set the diamonds themselves, and the diamonds have IGI reports. Thanks again for your response.

 

[nyc_sparkler]

Thanks so much for this info! I think I may opt for rare carat as mentioned by the other post. They have an option where they will set the diamonds themselves, and the diamonds have IGI reports. Thanks again for your response.

That makes a lot of sense. I used rarecarat to narrow down to a few vendors and ended up buying directly from 1215. Pricing was better than Vrai. I found that they had much more inventory on their own site than was shown on rarecarat. I was also able to ask them for videos and pictures of their stones that didn’t have videos posted (rarecarat does this too). I considered having the studs set by rarecarat or 1215 but their four prong settings didn’t have claw prongs as an option (I asked) and they couldn’t really tell me much about how low the stones would be set. I wanted them set low so as to stick out less from my ears.
Again - don’t narrow yourself to the stones these sites designate as pairs. Check angles and dimensions and you can find many other good pair options, then ask customer service to send pictures next to each other (if they are from the same lab) or for feedback on the pairing.

 

[AprilBaby]

Thank you so much for your response. I had never looked at rarecarat before, and when I just did they have many more options and better pricing. Appreciate your help.

You are very welcome!

 

[bv_jewels]

I have not yet found a better Clarity-Color for studs:

LovBe

Design your own engagement ring with LovBe using certified lab grown diamonds. LovBe is the best place to buy lab created diamonds. Shop now!

lovbe.com

You could ask them to custom create studs of the desired carat -- their loose diamond prices are really a WOW.

This is a new company but I like the aggressive pricing they keep. They are on rarecarat as well as on their website. by the way -- do you know that when you order on rarecaret you end up paying sales tax extra which is not the case when you buy on ecommerce site on the company. Just saying!

Just weigh out your options

 

[Kasey Bug]

Yadav had preset studs with pretty good color/clarity. 2ct tw is around $2800