Brilliant Earth Reviews: Our Honest Take (2023 Update)

Last Updated on January 5, 2024 by Learning Jewelry

This is a super in-depth Brilliant Earth review.

In this up-to-date review I’ll break down:

  • Who Brilliant Earth is
  • What makes Brilliant Earth unique 
  • Things I like & don't like
  • Whether or not their diamonds are worth the price tag
  • And lots more...

You'll learn exactly who should consider Brilliant Earth, and who shouldn't.

Why you should trust us

At LearningJewelry.com, we understand that trust is a vital factor in the diamond buying process. That's why we want to assure you that our articles are written by experts who have extensive knowledge and experience in the diamond industry. 

Our primary author Juli Church is a certified diamontologist with over 7 years of experience in sorting and evaluating diamonds for quality and value. She worked at retail stores for Kay and Zales where she learned industry secrets and now uses her insider knowledge to help readers like you to save big on the perfect gem for their needs.

Juli has written hundreds of jewelry and diamond articles and spends much of her free time browsing and helping out in ring buying Facebook groups to keep up with the latest diamond and wedding trends. Her wealth of knowledge and experience has given her a unique perspective on what information truly helps our readers find and buy the perfect diamond engagement ring or piece of jewelry.

With our team of experts and our commitment to providing accurate and trustworthy information, you can trust LearningJewelry.com to guide you through the diamond buying process with confidence.

Who Is Brilliant Earth?

Brilliant Earth is a popular online retailer that sells loose diamonds and ring settings. They offer colorless mined and lab-created diamonds as well as natural fancy colored diamonds and lab-created colored diamonds too.

In addition, they carry wedding rings, fashion rings, fine jewelry, and loose gemstones. As someone who values ethical practices, I'm impressed by their dedication to transparency.

We consider them in some regards to be one of the best places to buy diamonds from, along with a couple of other online stores.

Their extensive inventory satisfies various tastes and preferences. Let's start our official Brilliant Earth review.

The company was formed in 2005 and currently holds the title as the leading source in ethical diamonds. The idea was conceived by Beth Gerstein and Eric Grossberg, who were frustrated with the lack of transparency in the diamond and jewelry industry.

Even though they operate mainly online, Brilliant Earth also has showrooms for you to visit if you wanted to see their diamonds and engagement rings in person. They collaborate with customers through their 14 showrooms in major cities across the US like San Francisco and Denver.

You can book an appointment in-store or virtually.

What Makes Brilliant Earth Stand Out?

Brilliant Earth's business model is targeted market campaigning. In this case, they are targeting up-and-coming generations that are more environmentally and ethically conscious. I found that they innovate by providing blockchain diamonds, recycled diamonds, and lab-created diamonds.

It's no secret the newer generations are starting to snub their nose at natural diamonds in the jewelry world. Many are concerned about mining diamonds. Conflict diamonds are diamonds that have been used in civil wars in other countries.

But a lot of these generations have it wrong. You can have a natural diamond that isn't a conflict diamond. There is such thing as ethically mined diamonds.

The Kimberley Process was put in place in the jewelry world to ensure diamond retailers only sold natural diamonds through these channels. Even though conflict diamonds only come from a small number of areas, people wanted more proof that they weren't contributing to corrupt diamond mining.

Every online retailer I recommend at Learning Jewelry sells conflict-free diamonds or lab-created diamonds.

What sets Brilliant Earth engagement rings apart from other conflict-free fine jewelry stores is their commitment to going "Beyond Conflict-Free".

brilliant earth beyond conflict free info

This slogan is meant to guarantee responsible sourcing from all fronts, including human rights abuses, environmental problems, and other ethical practices. I appreciate how Brilliant Earth reviews and certifies the history of its diamonds.

The Kimberley Process ensures that natural diamonds don't come from conflict areas, but there's no given information on the history of where conflict-free diamonds have been.

Brilliant Earth is most focused on conflict-free gemstones, giving back to the community, and providing transparency to customers concerned about diamond and gemstone ethical practices.

I learned that their blockchain diamonds have an online network that tracks the diamond through each phase of its manufacturing to provide transparency to the customer.

Recycled diamonds are diamonds that have been previously owned, re-cut, and repurposed into new Brilliant Earth engagement rings.

They also sell lab-grown colorless and lab-grown fancy colored diamonds, which are also considered conflict-free diamonds; however, lab-grown diamonds aren't necessarily better for the environment like many people think.

All of Brilliant Earth's diamond suppliers are in Canada and the southern African countries of Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, and South Africa. As someone who appreciates ethical sourcing, I personally recommend their Canadian and Botswana Sort diamonds.

My Brilliant Earth Shopping Experience Walkthrough

So, what can you expect when buying Brilliant Earth diamonds and wedding rings? Is Brilliant Earth legit?

Here's the general rundown on how the average process should go. It CAN be as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4. Note that different items may take longer to ship than others. 

1. Picking Your Loose Gemstone

To reiterate, you have a mountain of choices for your center stone for an engagement ring. You can build your own diamond ring or build your own engagement ring.

The colored gemstone selection includes lab grown and natural emeralds, lab and natural (treated and untreated) sapphires, morganite, aquamarine, lab created rubies and the most popular diamond alternative, moissanite. 

On the diamond front, you can choose from a natural diamond, lab created diamond, natural fancy colored, and lab created colored diamonds. 

The natural colorless diamond collection is a large one, with almost 100,000 of different varying grades and diamond shapes. For a minimum of 1 carat, they have over 20,000. 

I don't like how there isn't 360˚ video on all of the Brilliant Earth diamonds. However, you definitely still have enough to choose from. 

Like other online diamond retailers, you can narrow down your selections. I like how you can also choose which area your Brilliant Earth diamond comes from in the filters, as well as choose between blockchain diamonds and the recycled diamonds. 

I'd stay away from Fair cut and Good cut diamonds, especially if you're choosing a round one. I'd never recommend getting a fair cut diamond and frankly I'm surprised the Brilliant Earth diamonds have it as an option.  

In addition to ideal and excellent cut diamonds, they also have a line of super ideal cut diamonds.

You won't find I clarity diamonds on Brilliant Earth's site. It means their diamonds have high quality diamond clarity and shouldn't be littered with inclusions all throughout it. This is very different from popular retailers like Kays and Jared who have majority of I clarity diamonds in their jewelry stores at double the price. 

Brilliant Earth's diamond engagement rings may be certified by the GIA, HRD, or IGI. I only recommend buying GIA certified natural diamonds

As an example, I've chosen a 1.5 carat oval cut diamond with a clarity grade of SI2 and a color grade of E. You'll notice in the video below, the Brilliant Earth diamond shows the cut grade as Ideal cut. Remember, round diamonds are the only official ideal cut grades. The GIA doesn't award cut grades to fancy shaped diamonds. 

Brilliant Earth's website separates fancy diamond shapes into different cut grades to sort quality. Let me reminder you that you should always pay more attention to the diamond specifics like table percentage and depth when looking at fancy shaped diamonds.

Their 360˚ video is nice and clean. You can easily see obvious inclusions and you can control it, which is one of my favorite things about great viewers.

If you're choosing a blockchain diamond like the one in my video example above, you'll receive an overview of its journey--from being mined in Botswana to being manufactured in India.

You can also view the GIA certificate online too which I found to be super convenient. Even places like James Allen don't allow you to do that. 

If you want to speak with a Brilliant Earth diamond jewelry specialist to go over your diamond, their staff is now available 24/7. I discovered their jewelry specialists to have extensive diamond training and some Brilliant Earth employees are GIA graduates. 

Now that we've picked out our conflict free diamond, let's check out the ring settings. 

Read also: Which engagement ring setting is right for you?

2. Choosing Your Setting

You don't have to put your natural or lab grown diamond in an engagement ring either. They also have setting options for diamond earrings or diamond pendant necklace. But today, we're choosing a ring setting. 

We have around 250 ring settings that show up to fit my oval diamond. That's a lot of options, seeing as each of them also come in white gold, rose gold, yellow gold, and platinum.

Every engagement ring setting seems to have these 4 options, which is nice. Other online retailers like Blue Nile sometimes only offer certain engagement ring designs in a particular precious metal. 

There's a lot of varied styles to choose from, both trendy and more unique. Their wedding rings also have a bit of flair. 

In addition to having a regular controllable 360˚ view, you can also visually see how your diamond engagement ring looks in different skin tones. This is especially helpful for people who aren't sure which color metal to go with or what looks best for their skin tone.

Check out my video on their skin tone feature below: 

The other additional viewer feature is only able to be done via the mobile site. They've incorporate a Virtual Try-on that allows you to take a picture of your own hand and super-impose the ring you've chosen on it.

You can scrimp and pinch and angle it to fit around your ring finger. This definitely helps a customer get a better idea of how the engagement ring style might look on them. 

They have about 45 ring settings under $1,000, but these are mainly solitaire settings and minimal side stone ring settings. 

At this point I've selected my diamond and ring setting, for a total of $9,030 before tax. At this point in time (and several times throughout the year), Brilliant Earth offers a free diamond necklace with purchases over $1,000. 

Read also: Top 6 places to buy diamond necklaces 

Everything looks great, so let's move on to checkout and return process. 

3. Purchase Process

You can either hit checkout or pay via Paypal on your Bag page. When you hit checkout, you're prompted to fill out all your info. You also have an option of creating a password for an account at this time. If you're not interested, you can just skip on by. I do recommend it though. 

Once all the contact info is filled out, you can choose from a number of ways to pay. Debit/credit, by phone, Paypal (again), Affirm, via bank wire for a 1.5% discount, and their financing. 

Brilliant Earth's financing option comes from Wells Fargo bank and is only available to US customers. You'll have to apply separately and put your card number if paying by financing. For a limited time, there's 12 months no interest if paid off by the 1 year. You can also manage your Brilliant Earth financing account online for your convenience, which is nice. 

Brilliant Earth checkout payment methods

Your payment options at Brilliant Earth include debit/credit, bank wire for $500+ purchases (1.5% discount), financing through Affirm, and The Wells Fargo Jewelry Advantage® credit card. There's no interest if you pay off your purchase within 12 months. 

brilliant earth flexible payment options explanation

The package is shipped to you via FedEx 2-day shipping. Brilliant Earth uses environmentally conscious packing materials as well as a wooden jewelry box which I find to be a nice touch. 

4. Return Policy

Like most jewelry retailers, Brilliant Earth gives their customers 30 days to return, whether in-store or online for free. The FedEx return label is sent to you. They also offer a 60 day free resizing from the time your shipment is prepared.

Many places offer this as well, but Brilliant Earth pays for shipping both ways and others don't. 

They don't accept returns on items that have been personalized or engraved. I'd advise refraining from getting an engraving on a ring until after you're sure you love it, just in case. 

To initiate a return, you'll have to contact the company via phone at 800.691.0952 to receive a Return Shipping Authorization Code. 

Once you receive the code, you'll write it on the outside of your FedEx packaging. If you don't write your code on the box, they won't accept your return and you'll be subject to a $50 restocking fee. 

Make sure to include anything that came with your purchase (certificates, jewelry box, and any complimentary items) because they won't be accepted otherwise. If you don't have your certificate, a $250 fee will apply. Don't write anything on the package about what the items are. 

Brilliant Earth asks all of their customers to "double box" their return. Put the jewelry box and certs in a medium box and then inside of a larger box. 

It takes approximately 7 days for a refund to your original method of payment. If paid via cash in-store or bank wire, you'll be sent a check. 

What Did I Like?

Blockchain Diamonds, Recycled Diamonds & Moyo Gemstones Options

Brilliant Earth offers unique diamond and gemstone options that you won't really see anywhere else.

The biggest advantage is Brilliant Earth's blockchain diamonds. They're the first diamond retailer to offer them. You can view blockchain diamonds by expanding the filters under Natural Diamonds and check the box marked "Blockchain Enabled". 

blockchain natural diamonds

Brilliant Earth has partnered up with Everledger, a blockchain technology company. Blockchain technology allows a person to view the manufacturing and distribution ledger through a computer system that is hard to hack or tamper with. 

A natural diamond goes through 7 phases of production before it ever hits the customer's hands. The Kimberley Process ensures that the first phase is conflict-free. But there's no tracking after that available for the customer. 

Blockchain diamonds fill in the missing pieces. When the diamond is passed on to the next phase, each head of that department must sign off in the online network. It's very strict. When you purchase the diamond, you're emailed by the company with a special access code to the network. You can see an overview on Brilliant Earth's website when looking at a blockchain diamond.

Currently, Brilliant Earth carries almost 10,000 blockchain enabled diamonds of various diamond grades and shapes. You can filter these by checking the box under the diamond filters. Around 2,000 of them are over 1 carat. 

While many online diamond retailers like James Allen and Blue Nile sell natural diamonds with GIA Diamond Reports, Brilliant Earth goes the extra mile with GIA Diamond Origin Reports to confirm the diamond has come from one of their approved mines.

They also offer recycled diamonds, which are pre-owned diamonds that have been recut and repurposed into a new center stone. 

Moyo Gemstones are a collection of colored gemstones that Brilliant Earth carries. It's a fairly small collection with under 20 options. Currently, the options are garnets, zircon, spinel, and tourmaline. 

Moyo means "heart" in Swahili. The Moyo Gemstones come from female jewelry artisans. This collections serves to improve the conditions for women in the mining communities. They are ethically sourced from women miners in Tanzania. 

Brilliant Earth Warranty

Most online retailers offer a manufacturer's warranty. Brilliant Earth is no different. I don't care for these warranties because they only cover manufacturing defects or design flaws. They won't cover routine maintenance for things like rhodium plating white gold, tightening stones, or retipping worn prongs. 

To cover these things, they offer the Brilliant Benefits Extended Service Plan. This is a 3 year warranty that covers normal wear and tear for your ring, rhodium plating or retipping prongs. If your wedding band is white gold, it'll need rhodium plating eventually. 

If you're wearing an engagement ring or wedding band every day for years and years, the natural metals will get worn. It's a fact of life. Has nothing to do with the quality or integrity of the metal.

So, to keep it in ship-shape, your Brilliant Earth engagement ring will need maintenance. You have the option to renew at the end of the three years. 

Brilliant Earth Lifetime Warranty

It's not a free lifetime warrantyrati, which is a bummer. But a paid option is better than no option at all in my opinion. The cost is based on a sliding scale dependent on the cost of your item. 

If you're shopping in-store, your Brilliant Earth representative will inform you all about the ESP. But online, they don't tell you much about it other than for more info to call. They also don't say anything about it being renewable after the three years. I'd never known that unless my virtual appointment didn't say so. 

brilliant earth extended service plan info

Giving Back

Not only can Brilliant Earth make sure your diamonds are ethically sourced diamonds, but you can see how much they care about other impacted areas of the world.

Brilliant Earth gives back to the community through various programs as well as parts of their sales. 

Sometimes they will have specific collections or jewelry pieces that go toward a certain cause. A portion of the Simone I. Smith Jewelry Collection goes to the NAACP mission to seek structural changes to expand democracy, eliminate disparities, and achieve racial justice through litigation, advocacy and public education.

brilliant earth simone smith collection

The Diamonds That Care collection is a line of brown diamond jewelry (you might know them as chocolate diamonds) at Brilliant Earth. They'll cost much less than the ones at Kay.

Portions of the proceeds to this collection go toward Feeding America's COVID-19 Response Fund. 

And you already know about the Moyo diamonds, which ensures that we are supporting women in the gemstone mining industry. And don't forget about the steps they've taken to minimize the carbon footprint by using recycled metals, environmentally conscious packaging and offering recycled diamonds.

What Didn't I Like?

There are a couple of things that I wish were different with this company. Here are the aspects I wasn't too keen on about BE. 

Website Info

The website is lacking pertinent information. A customer who might not be familiar with diamonds could stumble upon the site and not know anything about the Brilliant Earth warranty options unless they were digging for it. 

Under the footer, you can find info about the Brilliant Benefits plans, but not in detail or that's renewable. It just tells you to call. It'd be nice if they could include a general price scale on cost range of items like other companies that do ESPs. 

The blockchain diamonds also need a better explanation. I had to stop and go do extra research to find out exactly what blockchain is in a general capacity to understand how to do it with diamonds. 

blockchain enabled diamonds info

There's a small paragraph under the blockchain page, but it doesn't really explain exactly how it works and honestly, I didn't pay attention to it. My focus was on the loose diamonds below it.

I think there should be a main blockchain page that explains it all in detail and then clicks to open the loose blockchain diamonds. Brilliant Earth's website doesn't  explain the process of how it works for a customer. 

If you do a chat with a diamond expert, they'll explain all of this either in-store or virtually online. But the Brilliant Earth website just isn't too friendly to those who are trying to actively avoid the sales presentations in-store. Most people who buy an engagement ring online are buying for that reason. 

Same with the idea that you can't add an ESP until after you've already purchased and you have to call them. That just seems like a lot of extra steps when you could just have a button that calculates the cost of it, like Helzberg Diamonds does when you create your ring.

Brilliant Earth's website info really just needs to be a little more user-friendly, which is a pretty easy fix. 

How's Brilliant Earth's Pricing?

One of the biggest complaints you'll read on Brilliant Earth reviews online is about their diamond prices. More often than not, customers are finding cheaper diamonds with the same or close grades at other online retailers. 

Automatically, people always think, higher price: bigger ripoff. The diamond industry is already interpreted to many as a corporate scheme. While markup costs are inflated, there's a number of reasons why a diamond company might be more expensive when matched diamond for diamond. 

I've chosen an ideal round cut 1 carat blockchain diamond from Brilliant Earth. It has a clarity grade of VS2 and a color grade of G. It also comes with a GIA Origin Report. The price of this diamond is $7580. 

brilliant earth 1 carat round diamond

I've chosen a similar diamond from James Allen's website that comes with a GIA report. The cost of this diamond $6380. 

While not completely identical, that's still over a thousand dollars difference. That's a lot to a lot of people.

So, why is Brilliant Earth more expensive?

Let's think about it:

The average online engagement ring and wedding band retailer shows diamonds on their site that come directly from the vendors. The same diamonds are often on other wedding ring sites as well. Many retailers also offer their own personal stash of diamonds. 

All of these diamonds are sourced through the Kimberley Process, which ensures an ethical diamond. The blockchain technology is an expensive system as well. Extensive partnerships with other companies can contribute to cost.

You're also going to pay more for a blockchain diamond with a GIA Origin Report than you would a diamond from James Allen with a regular GIA Report. Both are top notch in the diamond industry. 

Always remember that even though the price tag may be different, there are other contributing factors the make a diamond the best value, not the best price.

Regardless of their price point, Brilliant Earth reviews still glow on the internet from customers. But if a natural Brilliant Earth diamond isn't in the cards for you, there's other options. 

A lab grown diamond from Brilliant Earth can cut the price down by 20-50%. Lab grown diamonds are cheaper than mined diamonds. 

Brilliant Earth Reddit Reputation

Many people go to the website Reddit.com to find out customer reviews and conversations about various jewelry stores, jewelers, and customer experiences.

Brilliant Earth is one of the few diamond stores that come up when posts are talking about buying lab created diamonds online. James Allen is another favorite on Reddit. 

Unfortunately, Brilliant Earth's reputation on Reddit has a lot of controversy. There are a lot of negative reviews there, but keep in mind that people are less likely to post what's positive as opposed to negative.

Remember that each experience is unique to the buyers, so they should always be taken with a grain of salt.

brilliant earth reddit review

Comparisons With Other Retailers 

More BrilliantEarth.com Reviews from Consumers

Customer reviews from various review sites not affiliated with companies themselves is a good way to get an idea of what you could experience with the company.

While not every experience is bad, know that some bad experiences are put on the internet in retribution or to deter others from buying. 

Bad and Negative Reviews

On Reddit: It’s safe to say that 2022 was not the best year for Brilliant Earth in customer reviews. When searching the company name, your results are flooded with many negative reviews. Some allege the company not standing behind their product for repairs, some not making it for the wedding date. 

Those who have had a pleasant experience with Brilliant Earth love their rings for the most part, but are nervous about damaging them. 

On Yelp and BB

Yelp Rating 4: On Yelp, the reception is much more divided. Recently, for every 5 star review, it seems there’s a 1 star review. There’s not many in-between, just one or the other. Out of the 920 reviews listed on Yelp, the majority of them are 5 star reviews. Some are based on their physical locations, while others are about the website itself.

BBB Rating 2.51: On the Better Business Bureau, Brilliant Earth has a low scoring reputation. However, less than 70 reviews have been posted, so keep that in mind. Just about all of the reviews posted in 2022 are 1 stars with a common issue. The issues most experience seem to be with the initial ordering. Many speak of having problems of time delay from choosing their rings to receiving them.

Canada, UK, NZ & Australia

Brilliant Earth doesn’t offer shipping worldwide, but to select international countries. These countries include the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. In addition to free shipping to all countries listed, they also offer free return shipping for everyone as well. All orders are shipped via FedEx.

Bottom Line: Only Buy From Them If...

Overall, Brilliant Earth is a great choice to purchase ethical diamonds from.

Brilliant Earth is an ethical diamond company committed to social change. Even though the Kimberley Process ensures that all of our other retailers don't obtain diamonds from conflict areas, Brilliant Earth goes beyond it and offers a deeper look into a diamonds past, using blockchain technology. 

Aside from blockchain, they put a heavy emphasis on recycled jewelry. Most of the Brilliant Earth engagement ring settings are created with recycled metals. 

Metal mining is a tremendous strain on the environment and using recycled metals helps them be more environmentally conscious. 

No diamond company is truly green, even if they're lab created diamonds. Lab grown diamonds aren't necessarily better for the environment. Brilliant Earth tries to do more by also providing packing materials suited for the environment, including a wooden jewelry box. 

A Brilliant Earth engagement ring is one that you can both love and feel good about your purchase. 

They give back in so many ways to women miners, people of color, education, hunger and other areas that are near and dear to the millennial generations and beyond.

Check out their huge selection of ethical jewelry from the link below.

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