Almost every article about engagement ring budgets is written from the retail side. This one is written from the bench.
We are a custom fine jewelry manufacturer in Shenzhen. We cast, set, and finish the pieces ourselves, which means we know exactly where the money in a ring goes. Below is that breakdown, with real numbers.
The most common misconception
The single most frequent assumption we encounter is this: take today’s spot gold price, multiply by the finished weight of the ring, add a reasonable margin, and that should be the price.
It is not, and the gap is larger than most buyers expect. Three things sit between the spot price and what the metal in your ring actually costs.
1. We work above the standard purity
Karat marks are legal minimums, not targets. A piece stamped 18k has to test at 75% gold. Producing exactly at 75% is risky, because any variation in the alloy can put a finished piece below the line.
We produce above the mark on purpose:
| Stamp | Standard minimum | What we actually run |
|---|---|---|
| 9k | 375 | 390 |
| 14k | 585 | 595 |
| 18k | 750 | 755 |
| Platinum | 950 | 955 |
That extra fraction is invisible in any photograph and no customer will ever notice it. It exists so every piece passes assay with margin. It also means our metal cost per gram is higher than a producer working to the minimum.
2. There is a per-gram refining surcharge
Raw gold does not arrive as usable alloy. Getting from bullion to workable karat gold carries a real per-gram cost that varies by karat: roughly 12 RMB per gram for 9k and 14k, 8 RMB for 18k, and 21 RMB for platinum. This sits on top of the spot price, every gram, every time.
3. Around 11% of the metal is lost in production
Casting, filing, and polishing all remove metal. Our loss rate runs about 11%. In practice, a finished 10 g ring requires roughly 11.1 g of gold committed to production.
Put these three together and the real metal cost of a ring is meaningfully above spot price multiplied by finished weight. That is not markup. It is what the metal costs before anyone is paid to shape it.
Where the rest of the money goes
For a typical diamond-set ring, the approximate split of the quoted price is around 60% metal, around 20% stones, and 15 to 20% labor covering CAD through polishing, with the balance covering everything else.
These are approximations and they shift with the design. A pave-heavy band moves labor up. A large center stone moves stones up sharply. A plain band is almost entirely metal. If you already own the stone, that line drops out of the quote, and the rest is metal and labor; how that works is covered in our guide to bringing your own diamond.
The number that surprises people is labor. Most buyers assume custom jewelry is expensive because of the craftsmanship. In reality materials dominate, and the craftsmanship is the smaller line.
On setting styles
One correction to a common belief: prong, pave, channel, and bezel settings cost roughly the same in labor. The exception is invisible setting, which runs about 50% more because of the precision required to seat stones with no visible metal holding them. If someone quotes you a large premium for pave over prong, ask what is driving it.
Karat choice changes weight, not just purity
Switching karat does two things at once, and buyers usually only account for the first. The obvious part: gold content is proportional, so the metal price scales with karat.
The part people miss is that the same design comes out at a different finished weight. Taking 18k as the baseline, 14k finishes at roughly 90% of the 18k weight and 9k at roughly 80%. So the price difference between karats is not a simple purity ratio. Lower karat also means less total metal in the piece. Working against that, 9k carries a higher labor charge and a higher per-gram surcharge.
Natural versus lab grown stones
The setting work is identical. Lab grown and natural diamonds have the same hardness, the same heat tolerance, and the same chipping risk at the bench. There is no technical reason to prefer one during production.
The difference is entirely cost. A lab grown stone runs at roughly 20% of the cost of a comparable natural stone. For a buyer with a fixed budget, that is the single largest lever available, larger than any change in metal, setting, or supplier. More on the material itself in our guide to lab grown diamonds.
Why ordering fifty does not make them cheaper
Every piece is made by hand, one at a time. Raw material is purchased at the same price whether the order is one ring or fifty, and the bench workers are paid per piece. There is no assembly line to amortize. What can move on a larger order is our margin, not our cost. For a brand planning a first collection, what this means for minimum orders is set out in why a one piece minimum works in solid gold.
The part that actually explains price differences
Everything above is roughly the same for any competent manufacturer. The number that varies enormously is what gets added after the piece leaves the bench.
A trading company or middleman typically adds 50% to 80% on top of the factory cost. We add under 13%.
That single difference explains something buyers find confusing: why some sellers run large permanent discounts and we do not.
If a seller has 60% of markup built in, they can advertise 40% off and still make more per piece than we do at full price. The discount is real arithmetic on an inflated starting number. We have no room for that, because there was never a cushion in the price to begin with.
The practical advice: compare final prices, not discount percentages. A heavily discounted price from a reseller is frequently still above an undiscounted factory price. The discount tells you about the seller’s markup structure, not about your saving.
Timeline, and what actually takes time
CAD renders take 1 to 3 days, since we run a dedicated CAD department. Simple designs are usually completed within 5 days. Most orders take around 7 to 10 days in production. Complex designs may require up to 15 days.
Most custom projects reach a final CAD in 1 to 2 revisions. Complex pieces take 2 to 3. That number is lower than most people expect, and it has less to do with software than with whether the person handling the project understands what the client is describing.
Two design types reliably extend the schedule: three dimensional and relief work, where the detail count is high, and anything assembled from many small components that must be linked by hand.
Rework runs 1% to 3%. The most common cause is not a manufacturing defect. It is color. A natural stone viewed loose can read differently once it is set against metal, and occasionally the finished effect is not what the client pictured.
On certification
Stones from 0.30 ct upward can be supplied with an IGI grading report. Smaller melee and pave stones are not individually certified. This is not a policy choice on our part. Below that size, individual certification is not something the industry does, and any supplier promising certificates on 0.01 ct accent stones is describing something that does not exist.
What we would ask a supplier
If you are evaluating any custom manufacturer, four questions separate a factory from a reseller:
- What purity do you actually run against the stamp? A producer who has never thought about this is not controlling their own alloy.
- What is your metal loss rate? If the answer is zero, they are not casting.
- What is your markup over cost? Most will not answer. The refusal is informative.
- Who is reading my reference image? If the person quoting has never touched the metal, the quote is a guess passed down a chain.
Redora Jewels is a factory-direct custom fine jewelry manufacturer in Shenzhen, China, producing solid 14k and 18k gold pieces with natural and lab grown diamonds. The facility has operated since 2011. If you have a design in mind, you can start a custom project with us.