The Durham Rose Blog
Ideas, advice & inspiration to help design your custom ring
Custom Engagement Rings and Wedding Bands for Men
There’s no denying that the engagement and wedding ring market is generally geared towards women. It’s what tradition dictates and society expects. But increasingly in recent years, we’ve been receiving requests for bespoke male engagement rings and customised wedding...
How to Create a Bespoke Engagement Ring Using Family Heirlooms
All engagement rings are special. But every so often we have a customer come to us with a truly sentimental commission. They’ll either have a grandparent’s engagement ring that they would like redesigned. Or stones from some other important family heirloom that they’d...
How to Choose the Stone Shape for Your Custom Engagement Ring
There are lots of things to consider when designing a custom engagement ring. The band metal, gem type, configuration, and style. But there’s one other area that can significantly impact upon the overall look of your finished ring. Stone shape. Whether you choose a 20...
5 Reasons to Select a Bespoke Engagement Ring
Custom engagement rings have become increasingly popular in recent years. As technology has evolved and techniques have changed, companies like Durham Rose have found ways to make custom ring design accessible to a wider number of people. The opportunity to design...
How to Match a Wedding Band to Your Custom Engagement Ring
When you’re getting married, a huge amount of attention is given to your engagement ring. And that’s a lovely thing. Because no matter how big, small, expensive or otherwise it is, your engagement ring is special. And you want other people to acknowledge it as so....
Is It Possible to Buy Custom Engagement Rings Online?
It sounds almost like a contradiction, doesn’t it? A custom engagement ring bought online. Because while all engagement rings should be personal, a bespoke engagement ring designed just for you surrrely has no place on the internet. Surrrrrely, all custom engagement...
In the Pink: From Diamonds to Tourmaline, Pink Stones Are the Ultimate Engagement Ring Must-Have
Colourful engagement ring stones have been gaining popularity for a few years now. From vivid yellow to black, the full spectrum is available. But look around and the one colour you’ll see desired more than most is pink. Shocking cerise, peach-tinged coral or soft...
Beautifully Bespoke Vintage Inspired Engagement Rings
There’s something inherently romantic about the look of vintage jewellery. Maybe it’s the association with all those gorgeously classic movies like Sabrina and Breakfast at Tiffanies. It might be the delicacy and intricacy of the designs. Or maybe it’s the thought of...
Top Ten Favourite Engagement Ring Styles
The beautiful thing about designing your own engagement ring is that there really are no rules. When you’re working with a company like Durham Rose, you can do pretty much anything within the laws of physics. As long as the components of a ring go together, we can...
The Ultimate Engagement Ring Sizing Guide
If you’re planning to make a proposal, you’ll have a fair few things on your mind right now. Not just the where and how to do it. But the endless questions relating to the ring – what will your intended like? Should you design it yourself? (The answer is always ‘yes!’...
Ethical Engagement Rings: The Durham Rose Story
There are lots of things that make Durham Rose stand apart from other jewellers. The bespoke-only ethos. Our approach to design and our determination to allow customer involvement. Our customer focus. And our complete transparency in terms of cost. But there’s one...
Get the Look: Twisted Band Engagement Rings
Twisted band engagement rings have become increasingly popular in recent years. Their main appeal is that they can make a relatively simple, low-cost ring look spectacular. And they really don’t need to be overly ‘showy’ to shine. So, what do you need to know about...
Get the Look: Bezel Set Engagement Rings
Second only to the perennial favourite solitaire, the bezel setting is one of the most popular styles of engagement ring. It’s also one of the oldest forms, simply because the bezel setting is the easiest way to secure a stone to the band without risk of future loss...
Get the Look: Two-Stone Engagement Rings
After a series of celebrity engagements, it’s tempting to think of two-stone engagement rings as a relatively new phenomenon. In the last few years, they’ve moved from being fairly rarely seen to being bang on trend. But in truth, the double stone ring has been around...
Get the Look: Flower Engagement Rings
Flowers and romance have long been inextricably linked. The Victorians even went so far as to ascribe a language to flowers – florioraphy – which was used for the subtle art of courtly love. If you wished to accept a secret proposal, wearing – or sending – a solid...
How to Create a Truly Personal Commitment Ring
Commitment rings have been part of social history for centuries. They’ve been used as a declaration of love or intention at times when marriage is not imminently possible – for whatever reason. They’ve been used to denote lasting friendship. Back in the 16th and 17th...
Get the Look: Ballerina Rings
Breath-taking in its beauty. Verging on naïve in appearance. Deceptively artful in design. The ballerina ring could only be a product of the 1950s. It was a time where elegance and decadence met, where confidence was high, and booms were around practically every...
The Complete Guide to Lab Grown Diamonds
‘But they’re not real, are they?’ is always, almost inevitably, the first thing that most people say when discussing lab grown diamonds. Which is interesting, because they absolutely are real. Given this common misconception, we thought it would be useful to put...
How to Care for Your Custom Engagement Ring
Congratulations, you have a beautiful engagement ring! It’s everything that you ever hoped it would be. In fact, it’s more, because it was designed just for you. It’s probably the most important piece of jewellery you you’ll ever own. So… now you have it, how are you...
The Mohs Scale – What is it and Why Does it Matter?
If you’ve ever been in the position of commissioning bespoke rings or other jewellery, there’s a good chance that your jeweller will have mentioned the Mohs Scale. And if you’re like most people, there’s also a good chance that you’ll have nodded politely and left it...