How much does custom jewelry cost?

Engagement rings have their own guide, because the stone is most of the number. The five brackets are below; the full picture, what moves the price and my guarantee on the stone, is in the guide.

• $3,000 to $7,000 These are mostly 14K pieces, sometimes platinum if it's a simple solitaire with minimal metal, with a lab diamond or a gemstone center.
• $8,000 to $15,000 This is where larger lab diamonds and smaller natural diamonds meet: the really premium labs at approximately 3 to 5 carats, or a natural diamond around 1 carat.
• $15,000 to $20,000 Your 1.5 to 2 carat naturals, depending on rarity and quality.
• $20,000 to $30,000 This is almost entirely natural stones.
• From $30,000 This is where the ultra rare stones come in.

Read the engagement ring cost guide

One note on silver, because it's the metal that shows up in the first tier and nowhere else. I don't make engagement rings in silver. It isn't durable enough, and my whole goal is a piece that lasts a really long time; silver doesn't hold larger stones or pave detail the way gold and platinum do. It's great for thicker bracelets, pendants, and gifts.

Pieces that aren't rings price on the same logic as rings. The through line is always the same five things: the carat weight, natural versus lab, whether there's a rare gemstone involved, the metal type and how much of it, and the design complexity.

The middle tiers are hard to pin down from a page because two pieces in the same bracket can be built from opposite ingredients: a pair of studs is almost no metal and two bigger stones, a tennis bracelet is a lot of metal and a lot of stones. Tell me what you're picturing and I'll tell you which side of it you're on.

Bands, heirloom pieces and repairs each have their own page: wedding bands, men's bands, heirloom redesign, repair.

The difference between tiers isn't what you get from me. I bring the same design time, sourcing time, CAD work, stone inspections and quality control to every single tier, no matter what someone's working with or what their price point is. That's universal.

What changes is the path. If you need a tennis necklace in three weeks for your wife's birthday, we aren't doing a lot of CAD. I source what already exists at your price point, bring in several options, and you can walk out the same day. The other path is made to order from my catalog: if the budget or the timeline is tight, a design where the CAD already exists can be the better choice, with the same one-on-one attention as a piece from scratch.

A few things that are true at every level:

The stone is the one thing I can't quote from a page, because the stone is specific. Two stones with identical reports can look nothing alike, and the only honest quote is the one I give with the stone in front of me. The piece is explained here. The stone gets quoted in the room.

Here's what I'd rather you hear from me now than after you've shopped around. If you find a stone you love somewhere else, show it to me and I'll beat it. The same stone means the same grading lab, the same carat weight within the usual tolerance, the same color, clarity, cut and fluorescence, a certificate number you can verify on the lab's site, and the price compared with the setting and tax counted the same way on both sides. A lower price on a stone that fails any of those isn't a lower price on the same stone. It's a different stone.

People assume a diamond through me will cost more. It's usually the opposite. A client came in with a one carat budget and I found them a 1.53 at the same price. Purely the result of exhaustive sourcing. I'm checking more or less the world's inventory, and I won't put a stone in front of you unless I think it's a good value and I'm excited about it.

Not in the way people expect. Custom doesn't always cost more than retail, and it certainly doesn't once you're paying for a $150 repair every six months on a piece that was never built right. It can feel more expensive up front. Over the years it ends up less expensive, less of a headache, and a piece you can pass down.

A few things I'd rather you know than wonder about. The CAD is probably the least expensive part of the whole process; it isn't why my piece might cost more than one you found in a case. A ring stamped 14K isn't made to the same quality just because it's stamped 14K, and there's a reason a piece listed online for $1,800 isn't something I can match in price. It's all quality. The quote I give you is all inclusive: the materials, the weight we cast, the CAD, the setting, done by hand by people who are absolute craftsmen. There's no factory. And the number is competitive with the market.

Budget is one of the first things I ask about, so I can pull the right stones and so you can enjoy the rest of the conversation instead of wondering whether this is going to cost more than you can afford. We get it out of the way early.

When I quote, I give you the full range of what I realistically expect. I'm not going to hook you and come back with a bigger number, and I will never say yes to a design element I know will cause problems later unless we've talked it through and you've decided it's worth it. Sometimes the piece costs less than you expected. Sometimes more. It always starts with what matters most to you, and that's a conversation, not a calculator.