Custom Jewelry Design in Miami, Aventura & Boca Raton

Custom jewelry in Miami: how a piece actually gets made

Whatever the showroom looks like, a custom piece is made in four steps, and it pays to know them before you order. First a design: a sketch or, more often now, a CAD model you can turn on a screen. Then a wax or resin model you can hold and try on. Then casting in the metal you chose, and finally setting, finishing and polishing at the bench. The 56 jewelers listed above do some or all of this in-house; in the Seybold Building, Miami's manufacturing floor, you can often watch the caster and the setter work, while designers in Aventura and Boca Raton build one-off rings and pendants for their own clients.

The step that protects you is the model: approve the wax or the render before anything is cast, because after casting, changes cost real money.

Using your own diamond or stone

A large share of custom work in South Florida starts with a stone the client already owns: an inherited diamond, a stone from a ring that no longer fits, a loose gem bought elsewhere. Most bench jewelers will design and build a mounting for it, and a good one will first check the stone under the loupe and tell you honestly if it has a chip or a weak girdle that the setting has to protect. Ask for the stone to be described on the invoice before it leaves your hand, with weight and any inscription, so you get back exactly what you brought.

• Bring any certificate or old appraisal; it speeds the design and documents the stone.
• Decide the metal early (14k or 18k gold, platinum); it changes the price more than the design does.
• Ask how many revisions are included and what a change after casting costs.

What custom jewelry costs, and why quotes differ

Three things drive the number: the metal weight, the stones you add, and the hours at the bench. A simple solitaire mounting in 14k gold is a very different quote from a hand-fabricated halo in platinum. Two honest quotes for the same design can still differ by hundreds of dollars depending on whether the shop casts in-house or sends out, so get two. Before you commit, our free AI estimate gives you a reference point for what the finished piece should be worth, and the seven questions in our jeweler guide cover deposits, timelines and what belongs on the invoice.

Frequently asked questions