What Are Birthstones Actually Made Of? Natural, Lab-Created and Cubic Zirconia

Ask what the stone in a birthstone necklace is made of and there are three honest answers — a mined gemstone, a lab-grown gemstone, or a lab-made lookalike — plus a fourth answer that is vague only because someone chose to keep it that way. The three honest ones are all legitimate. The fourth is the one worth walking away from.

This guide names the materials: what cubic zirconia physically is and why it throws more colored fire than a diamond, why a lab-created ruby is chemically a ruby rather than an imitation, how hard each of the twelve traditional birthstones really is, and how to read a product page so you know which of the three you are buying. At the end we say what we set in our own pieces, counted page by page.

Three Different Things Get Sold as "Birthstones"

The vocabulary is where the confusion starts, and the three terms are not interchangeable.

Mined natural. The stone formed in the earth and was dug out of it. Price tracks scarcity, size and color quality.

Lab-created, also called synthetic or lab-grown. Grown in a factory, but with the same chemical composition and crystal structure as the mined version. A lab-created ruby is aluminum oxide colored by chromium, exactly like a mined ruby. "Synthetic" is a technical word about origin, not a polite word for fake.

Simulant, also called imitation. Looks like the stone it stands in for but is made of something else. Cubic zirconia is the common one in modern jewelry: zirconium dioxide, with no natural equivalent in usable form. Glass and lead crystal are simulants too, and much softer ones.

Long-standing trade practice in North America is that a lab-grown stone should never be called simply a "ruby" — the words lab-created or synthetic belong in the name — and a simulant should be named for what it is. So when a listing gives the stone a house trade name instead of a composition, nothing has actually been said. Naming the material is the easiest sentence in the whole listing to write.

Cubic Zirconia: Zirconium Dioxide, and More Fire Than a Diamond

Cubic zirconia is crystallized zirconium dioxide, ZrO₂, stabilized with a little yttrium or calcium oxide so the cubic crystal form holds at room temperature. It is grown from a melt near 2,700 °C and was commercialized in the 1970s specifically as a diamond simulant. Everything about it is engineered, which is why it behaves so consistently.

• Hardness 8 to 8.5 on the Mohs scale. Harder than quartz at 7 and far harder than glass at around 5.5 — which matters most on a bracelet, the piece that meets desks and car doors daily.
• Dispersion 0.058 to 0.066, against a diamond's 0.044. Dispersion is the splitting of white light into spectral colors — what jewelers call fire. Cubic zirconia has measurably more of it than the stone it was invented to imitate. It does not look like a weak diamond; it looks like one with the color turned up.
• Density 5.6 to 6.0 g/cm³, against a diamond's 3.52. A cubic zirconia is noticeably heavier than a diamond cut to the same dimensions — long the quickest way to tell the two apart without instruments.

The property that matters most for a family piece is unglamorous: color is added with metal oxide dopants during growth, so it is repeatable. Seven stones ordered for seven birthdays arrive as seven matched, deliberate colors. Seven mined stones would not match, because mined color varies by deposit and by specimen.

What cubic zirconia will not do is hold value; it has no resale market and never had one. If you want a financial asset, this is the wrong material. If you want a keepsake that survives a school run, it is a rational choice rather than a compromise.

Lab-Created Ruby, Emerald and Sapphire: The Same Stone, Grown

Ruby and sapphire are both corundum, aluminum oxide. Traces of chromium make it red and we call it ruby; traces of iron and titanium make it blue and we call it sapphire. Both sit at 9 on the Mohs scale, second only to diamond among gem materials in common use.

Growing corundum is not new technology: the flame-fusion method behind most lab ruby and sapphire dates to 1902, so lab-grown ruby has been in the trade for over a century. Lab emerald — beryl colored by chromium or vanadium, Mohs 7.5 to 8 — is grown hydrothermally or in a flux, more slowly and at higher cost.

Here is the part that surprises people: a lab-created ruby and a mined ruby share the same chemistry, crystal structure, hardness and refractive index. Under magnification a gemologist reads growth features — curved striae in flame-fusion material, different inclusions in mined stones — and that is genuinely the difference. It is a question of origin and rarity, and therefore price, not of quality. A lab-created ruby is a ruby by composition, at a small fraction of the mined price. It is also not a mined ruby, and a page that says only "ruby" while meaning the grown stone is hiding the more relevant of the two facts.

Mined Stones: What the Price Actually Buys

A mined stone is paid for by scarcity. Two chemically identical sapphires can differ many times over in price on color saturation, clarity and origin alone. And the evidence of a mined origin is usually the imperfection: inclusions, color zoning and growth patterns are what a gemologist reads to place a stone in the ground rather than in a reactor. Flawlessness in a large colored gem is the suspicious result, not the reassuring one.

Two things worth knowing before comparing prices anywhere. Treatment is normal and should be disclosed — most blue sapphire has been heated, most emerald oil- or resin-filled to hide fractures, much turquoise stabilized or dyed. And hardness varies enormously across the traditional list, which is the next table.

The Twelve Months, and How Hard Each Stone Really Is

The list below is the traditional North American birthstone list. It is jewelry convention and says nothing about what any particular piece contains — it tells you which stone a month is associated with, not what is in the setting. The hardness column is the part that changes people's minds.

Read that column against cubic zirconia's 8 to 8.5 and the ranking inverts. Only April's diamond, July's ruby and September's sapphire are harder. For the other nine months, at least one traditional stone is softer than the simulant — pearl dramatically so, and opal, turquoise and moonstone by a wide margin. A pearl or an opal in a daily-wear bracelet is the fragile choice, not the safe one.

That is the honest case for a well-made simulant in a piece meant to be worn without thinking about it. It is not a better stone than a mined sapphire. It is a more durable one than a mined opal, at a fraction of the cost of either.

Natural, Lab-Created or Cubic Zirconia: Side by Side

The bottom row is this article compressed. Any of the three is a defensible thing to buy. Only one kind of listing is indefensible, and it is the one that refuses to fill that row in.

How to Read a Product Page — and What Vague Naming Tells You

A page written by someone who knows what they are selling gives three things about the stone: the material, the size in millimeters, and the cut. "Cubic zirconia, 4×4 mm heart cut" is complete. "Sparkling birthstone crystal" is a mood, and the absence of the other two is informative.

The same test applies to the metal, and that is where the trap sits. Silver-tone, silver color and silver-plated describe a surface finish; only a stated 925 sterling silver tells you what the body of the piece is made from. Alloy and plated brass are answers too, but answers about a coating rather than about a metal you can polish for years.

Then there is the tell that prompted this article. If a listing gives the center material an invented name — a house stone, a brand word where a composition belongs — the seller has chosen a phrase that cannot be checked. There is no rule against inventing a name, and no reason to invent one either, unless the real name would put a buyer off.

Three questions get a straight answer from any seller by email:

• Is the stone mined, lab-created, or a simulant such as cubic zirconia?
• What is the base metal — 925 sterling silver, stainless steel, brass, copper, or a plating over one of those?
• What size is the stone in millimeters, and what is the cut?

What We Set in Our Own Birthstone Pieces

It would be inconsistent to write the above and stay vague about our own stock, so here is the count. Our birthstone jewelry collection runs 106 designs, from CA$59.95 to CA$209.95. In September 2026 we read 102 of those product pages line by line and recorded what each says about the stone.

• 36 pages name cubic zirconia outright — wording such as "Stone: Cubic zirconia birthstones" or "4×4 mm heart-cut cubic zirconia".
• 22 of those same 36 — a subset, not an additional group — also name a lab-created ruby, emerald or sapphire as the center stone, with cubic zirconia in the pavé and halo work around it. Those are the statement rings in personalized birthstone rings.
• 66 pages say "birthstone" without naming the material — one reads simply "A name on each loop, a birthstone at each end."
• Not one page describes its stone as a mined natural gemstone. We do not make that claim anywhere, which is a checkable fact rather than a promise.

Two things follow, and we would rather state both than round them into a slogan. We are not a mined-gemstone jeweler, and nothing here is presented as one. But it would be equally wrong to say everything in the collection is cubic zirconia, because those 66 pages do not say so and we will not invent a specification on their behalf. If a design you like sits in that unnamed group and the material decides the purchase, write to us before you order and we will check that specific design and tell you.

On metal, the same page-by-page count: 60 of the 102 state 925 sterling silver, and the rest name something else — copper on fourteen, stainless steel on seven, leather cord on three, brass on two. Beaded men's designs are built on leather and copper by intent, not as a substitute for anything. The exact material for each design is listed on its product page.

One practical note on the personalization. Names and engraving are typed into a plain text box and cut character for character exactly as typed — there is no on-screen rendering of the text and no font to choose, so that field is the only place your spelling gets checked. To confirm a month first, our birthstone finder works from a month, a birth date or a zodiac sign.

Price, Delivery and Returns for Canadian Orders

Prices in this collection run from CA$59.95 to CA$209.95 in Canadian dollars. Standard shipping is CA$9.95 and free on orders over CA$139. Delivery takes 7–12 business days once the piece leaves the studio, every order is tracked with the number emailed to you as it ships, and multiple items ship together.

One cross-border fact stated plainly rather than buried: any customs duties, taxes or import charges that may arise during shipment are the purchaser's responsibility — better read here than discovered at the door. Full wording is on our delivery and shipping page, and the wider Canadian picture is covered in buying personalized jewelry in Canada.

You have 60 days from the date you receive your order to request a return or exchange. Because personalized pieces are crafted for one customer, all sales are final on custom work — the practical reason to read the engraving field back before paying. That limit runs one way only: if the fault is ours, whether a wrong item, damage in transit, or an engraving that does not match what you ordered, you get a free replacement or a full refund with no postage fees, restocking fees or hidden charges. The policy is on our return and exchange page.

IfShe has been making personalized jewelry since 2013 and today runs its own storefronts in twelve countries, this Canadian store among them, with the same catalog and policies. The company behind them is Ifshe Jewelry Co., Limited, registered in Hong Kong under company number 74640664. Every photo submitted with an order is checked by a person before production, and questions about a design reach a human through our contact page.

Common Questions

Are the birthstones in jewelry real gemstones?

It depends on the piece, and the reliable answer is on its product page. Most affordable birthstone jewelry sets cubic zirconia, a genuine crystalline material but not the mined gemstone of the month. Mid-range pieces often set lab-created ruby, emerald or sapphire, chemically the same as their mined versions. Mined natural gems in twelve matched colors are rare and priced accordingly. On our pages, 36 of 102 name cubic zirconia, 22 of those also name a lab-created center stone, and none claims a mined gemstone.

Is cubic zirconia the same thing as zircon?

No, and the names are unhelpfully close. Zircon is a natural mineral, zirconium silicate, hardness about 6.5 to 7.5, and one of December's traditional stones. Cubic zirconia is lab-made zirconium dioxide at 8 to 8.5, developed to imitate diamond.

Is a lab-created ruby a real ruby?

By composition, yes: aluminum oxide colored by chromium, with the same crystal structure and hardness of 9 as a mined ruby. What it is not is a mined ruby, and that difference is real for rarity and price even though it is invisible without magnification. A seller should tell you which one you are looking at.

Will cubic zirconia scratch or cloud over time?

At 8 to 8.5 it resists scratching better than nine of the twelve traditional birthstones, so everyday knocks are not the usual problem. When a stone looks duller after a year or two it is almost always a film of skin oil, hand cream or hairspray rather than damage: warm water, a drop of dish soap and a soft toothbrush behind the setting normally brings it back. Facet edges do soften after many years of daily wear, which reads as a little less fire.

How do I find out the material for a design whose page does not say?

Ask us. Send the design name through our contact page before you order and we will check that product and reply with what the stone and base metal actually are. We would rather answer the question than let you assume — and if the answer changes your mind, better before the piece is made than after.