Real vs Imitation Pearls: What's the Difference?

Natural pearls and cultured pearls are grown by living mollusks; an imitation pearl is a manufactured product, of any material, that only looks like one.⁴ The table sums up the main differences, and the drawing shows what each looks like inside.

Cultured pearl

• Grown by a mollusk
• Layers of nacre over a shell bead

Glass imitation

• Manufactured
• A glass bead with a thin pearly coating

Shell imitation

• Manufactured
• A shell bead with a thin pearly coating

Text version of this diagram

The drawing shows three beads cut in half. The cultured pearl has a banded shell bead in the middle and several rings of nacre around it, grown by the mollusk. The glass imitation is a plain glass bead with only a thin colored coating on its surface. The shell imitation is a large banded shell bead, again with only a thin coating on the surface and no nacre grown around it.

What imitations are made of#

Common imitations are solid or hollow beads of glass, plastic or shell, coated with a “pearl essence” that simulates the iridescence of nacre.¹

One well-studied example is Majorica, made on the Spanish island of Majorca. Its bead is glass, a lead silicate, and its coating is a “pearl essence” made from the iridescent substance in fish scales and applied to the bead in layers.² The company was founded in Barcelona in 1890, made its early imitations in the 1900s from glass beads coated with man-made resins, and produced the imitation it sells as Majorica by 1951.²

Shell is used too. “Shell pearls”, beads of shell coated with artificial materials to look like natural or cultured pearls, have a long history in the jewelry market.³ CIBJO also counts the coque de perle, a section of nautilus shell finished to look like a large half-pearl, as an imitation.⁶

Some imitations copy rarer pearls. In 2026, GIA reported a dyed piece of shell, carved and polished to look like a non-nacreous pearl from a pen shell.⁷

How imitations fool people#

To the untrained eye, good imitations look very much like saltwater cultured pearls.² Coated beads of shell can match cultured pearls in heft as well as appearance,³ and imitations can even turn up mixed into strands of real pearls.¹

Imitations come in the same sizes and shapes as real pearls. Majorica made beads from 1 mm to 22 mm, most of them round.²

How to tell real and imitation pearls apart#

Several checks separate them, and the page how to tell if pearls are real explains each one. Under magnification, imitations lack nacre’s overlapping platelets and often show a glittery coating.¹ In GIA’s study, cultured pearls showed sharp edges at the drill hole while the imitations showed ragged ones, and in the tooth test the cultured pearls felt gritty and the imitations smooth.² A gem laboratory can confirm the answer.⁸

How long imitations last#

An imitation’s pearly look is only a thin coating. On some shell-bead imitations, the coating had chipped and peeled near the drill holes, exposing the white shell underneath.³

What imitations must be called#

In the United States, an imitation must be called an “imitation”, “artificial” or “simulated” pearl, with the qualifying word as conspicuous as the word “pearl”, and terms such as “faux pearl” and “fashion pearl” need the same qualifier.⁴ Words such as “real”, “genuine” and “precious” may never describe an imitation, and regional names such as “Mallorca pearls” need a qualifier too.⁴

GIA’s laboratory has called names such as “shell pearl”, or simply “pearl”, misleading for these imitations, and notes that CIBJO requires “imitation” or “simulated” in front of the name.³

Choosing between real and imitation pearls#

Choose an imitation if you want the look of pearls at a lower cost. GIA’s 1990 study noted that, as cultured pearls grew costlier and natural pearls stayed rare and expensive, people turned to imitations as an affordable alternative.²

Choose natural or cultured pearls if you want a gem grown by a living mollusk. The pearl types section describes the main kinds.