Tenth Anniversary Stone: Diamond

What is the 10th anniversary stone?

The 10th anniversary stone is diamond. Unlike many years, there's no split to puzzle over: the traditional list and the modern list both name diamond, which you can confirm on the IGS anniversary list. Ten years is treated as the first major milestone on the calendar, the point where the run of coloured stones gives way to the one gem everyone recognises as the marker of something meant to last.

What makes diamond different

Diamond is pure carbon that crystallised under enormous pressure and heat deep in the earth. What sets it apart for jewellery is durability: it's a perfect 10 on the Mohs scale, the hardest natural material used in jewellery, as the IGS durability guide confirms. In plain terms, it's the one stone you genuinely never have to fuss over. It won't scratch in normal wear, it won't frost over the years, and it can move from an engagement ring to a pendant decades later still looking sharp. Most diamonds are near-colourless, though they occur in every colour, with warm champagne and fancy pinks and blues among them. You can see how different shapes read on our diamond shapes guide.

Why diamond for the tenth year

The logic here is refreshingly literal. Ten years is the first decade, a real threshold, and the calendar reaches for its hardest, most enduring stone to mark it. Diamond's reputation as the anniversary and engagement stone is more recent than most people assume, driven heavily by twentieth-century marketing rather than ancient tradition, and we'd rather be honest about that than dress it up. But the underlying idea holds up on its own: the most durable thing you can wear is a fitting way to mark ten years that have proven durable themselves. It's also the birthstone for April, so if your partner was born that month, a tenth-anniversary diamond covers both occasions, which you can read about on our April birthstone page.

Choosing a piece for your tenth anniversary

Here's where we'll be opinionated. The single most important thing about a diamond is its cut, not its size. Cut is what makes a diamond return light and sparkle, and a smaller, well-cut stone will out-perform a larger, poorly cut one every time. So if you're weighing a bigger dull stone against a smaller lively one, take the lively one. Spend on cut first, then decide how far your budget stretches on size.

For the piece itself, a ten-year anniversary is a natural moment for one of a few classic moves. A diamond eternity or half-eternity band, worn alongside the original wedding ring, is our favourite, because it literally adds a ring of stones for the decade completed. Diamond stud earrings are the most versatile gift going and get worn constantly. A solitaire pendant is understated and easy to wear every day. And for many couples, ten years is the moment to upgrade the original engagement ring, either resetting the existing stone into a fresh design or moving up to a larger centre diamond.

Because diamond is a 10 on Mohs, you have complete freedom of setting. There's no durability trade-off to manage the way there is with softer coloured stones, so you can choose claws, bezels or pavé purely on looks. We design and set diamond jewellery by hand here in Coquitlam, so a tenth-anniversary piece is built for the person wearing it rather than pulled from a case. We can also help you understand a stone's quality before you commit, so you're spending your budget where it actually shows. To see where diamond sits among the other milestones, our anniversary stones guide runs through every year, and the bespoke anniversary pieces page shows how a made-to-order commission or a ring upgrade comes together from first sketch to finished piece.

Frequently asked questions