Why does a bigger stone change the percentages so much?

Diamond price rises faster than carat weight, especially past thresholds like 0.5, 1 and 2 carats, while a setting for a larger stone doesn't need proportionally more metal or labour. So as the stone gets bigger, its share of the total cost grows and everything else shrinks as a percentage, even though the absolute cost of labour barely changes.

Is a jeweller's margin the same as pure profit?

No. Margin covers workshop rent, insurance, equipment, staff wages, training, and business running costs before anything counts as profit. A reasonable bespoke margin, often 15-30% of the total price, is comparable to overhead margins in most skilled trade and design businesses, not an inflated markup unique to jewellery.

Does asking for a cheaper metal actually save much money?

Less than people expect at higher budgets. Switching from platinum to 18ct gold might save a few hundred pounds on a typical ring, meaningful at a £1,500 budget but a small fraction of a £6,000 commission where the stone dominates the total.

Why do two jewellers quote very different prices for what looks like the same ring?

Because the visible design can be identical while the underlying stone grade, metal purity, and labour hours differ substantially, or because one jeweller's margin covers a larger workshop overhead than another's. Always ask for a breakdown by stone, metal and labour rather than comparing headline prices alone.

Where does the money go in a bespoke commission?

Most jewellers quote a single total. Almost none show what it's made of, which leaves buyers unable to tell whether a price is fair or simply confident. The breakdown below reflects how bespoke commission costs typically split in the UK as of 2026, and, more usefully, why that split moves so much depending on budget.

The rough breakdown

These are proportional bands, not fixed percentages, because the split shifts with budget level, stone choice and design complexity. But across a typical range of UK bespoke commissions, the money tends to divide roughly as follows.

Stone, 30-60% of total. This is almost always the largest single line item, and its share grows as the overall budget rises. On a modest commission with a small lab-grown stone, the stone might be a third of the cost. On a £10,000-plus commission built around a sizeable mined diamond or a rare coloured gemstone, the stone can be well over half the total.

Metal, 8-15%. The raw cost of gold or platinum, plus the wastage inherent in casting and finishing. As of August 2026, 18ct gold trades at roughly £75-£80 per gram at spot price, though jewellers' actual sourcing cost for fabricated gold runs above scrap-buying rates. A typical ring band uses somewhere between 3 and 8 grams of metal depending on width and design, so raw metal cost alone often runs into the low hundreds of pounds before labour is added.

Design and CAD, 5-12%. Consultation time, sketching or 3D rendering, and revision rounds. This is where the "free design" claim some jewellers make gets tested, more on that below.

Bench labour, 15-25%. The hands-on making: casting or fabricating the setting, filing, polishing, and assembly. This is skilled, time-intensive work, and it's the category that varies least in absolute pounds across different budget levels, which is precisely why its percentage share swings so much.

Stone-setting, 3-8%. Distinct from general bench labour, this is the specific, delicate task of securing the stone or stones into the setting, whether that's claw, pavé, bezel or channel work. More stones or more intricate setting styles push this figure up.

Hallmarking and incidentals, 1-3%. UK Assay Office hallmarking is legally required on gold items over 1 gram and silver over 7.78 grams, and it's genuinely inexpensive, typically £5-£25 per piece as of 2026. Packaging, insurance valuation documents, and small administrative costs sit in this same small slice.

Margin, 15-30% of the remainder. This covers workshop rent, staff wages, equipment, insurance, training and, only after all of that, profit. It is the category people are quickest to resent and least likely to understand, so it's worth taking seriously on its own.

Why the stone almost always dominates

Diamond and gemstone pricing doesn't move in a straight line with size. A 1-carat diamond costs considerably more than double a 0.5-carat stone of equivalent grade, because larger rough stones are rarer and cutting them to size sacrifices more material. This means that as a couple chooses a bigger or higher-grade stone, its share of the total budget grows disproportionately, simply because nothing else in the commission scales the same way. A bigger stone doesn't need a proportionally bigger, more labour-intensive setting; it typically needs the same claws, the same basic bench hours, sometimes even less metal relative to the stone's visual size. That's the core reason the stone's percentage climbs so sharply on larger commissions.

Why labour costs about the same on a £2,000 ring and a £6,000 ring

This is the detail most people don't expect. The bench hours needed to make a simple solitaire setting are broadly similar whether the centre stone cost £300 or £4,000, because the physical process, casting the shank, shaping the head, polishing, setting the claws, doesn't change much with stone value. A jeweller doesn't spend three times longer setting a more expensive stone; the skill and time required are dictated by the design's complexity, not the stone's price tag.

The practical consequence: on a £2,000 commission, labour might represent 25-30% of the total, a substantial chunk. On a £6,000 commission with the same setting style but a pricier stone, that same absolute labour cost might represent only 10-12% of the total. The pounds spent on labour haven't changed much; the total has grown around it. This is also why upgrading only the stone, keeping the setting simple, is often the most cost-efficient way to spend an increased budget, since it doesn't add proportionally more labour cost.

What "free design" actually means

Many UK bespoke jewellers advertise no design fee, and this is broadly true in the sense that there's no separate invoice line for it. But design time is never actually free; it's priced into the overall project cost, distributed across the design-and-CAD share described above. A workshop offering unlimited revisions and no design fee is still recovering that cost somewhere, either through a slightly higher baseline setting price, a minimum order value, or a cap on how many revision rounds are genuinely unlimited in practice.

This matters for two reasons. First, it means comparing a "with design fee" jeweller against a "free design" jeweller purely on the headline design charge is misleading; the honest comparison is the final all-in price for a comparable ring. Second, it means excessive, open-ended revisions do have a real cost even when no invoice shows it, which is one reason workshops benefit from a client arriving with a reasonably clear idea of what they want, discussed further in relation to setting a budget.

How the breakdown shifts between an entry-level and a premium commission

Putting rough figures against two examples makes the shift concrete. On a £2,000 commission with a small lab-grown stone, the split might look something like: stone 30%, metal 12%, design and CAD 10%, bench labour 25%, setting 6%, hallmarking and incidentals 2%, margin 15%. Labour and design together account for over a third of the total, because the fixed costs of running a workshop project don't shrink just because the stone is modest.

On a £7,000 commission with a larger mined diamond, the same workshop, doing broadly similar bench work, might show: stone 55%, metal 9%, design and CAD 4%, bench labour 15%, setting 5%, hallmarking and incidentals 1%, margin 11%. The pounds spent on labour and design have likely increased only modestly between the two examples, perhaps by a few hundred pounds to reflect a slightly more involved setting, while the stone's absolute cost has grown by several thousand. That's the entire explanation for why the percentages move so much: the denominator changes far more than several of the numerators do.

Is margin unreasonable?

A 15-30% margin on a bespoke commission is broadly in line with overhead margins across skilled trade and design-led small businesses in the UK, not an inflated figure specific to jewellery. It covers genuinely necessary costs: workshop rent, insurance (which for a business handling precious stones and metals is not trivial), staff wages, tool maintenance, and the training that keeps bench skills current. What separates a reasonable margin from an excessive one is usually not the percentage itself but transparency about it, workshops willing to explain, even roughly, what a price is built from tend to be pricing more honestly than those offering only a total.

The bottom line

A bespoke ring price is not one number; it's several categories layered together, and the stone almost always carries the largest share, more so as budgets rise. Bench labour costs stay relatively fixed in absolute pounds regardless of stone value, which is why its percentage share shrinks on bigger commissions. Understanding this breakdown, even roughly, is the single most useful tool a buyer has for judging whether a quote is fair, and for deciding where an extra few hundred pounds would actually make the most visible difference.