Is Night Vision the Next Battleground in High-End Watchmaking?

IWC’s latest innovation shows the future of the watch industry has never been brighter.

Published May 28, 2024

·

Updated May 28, 2024

Given that luxury watches run on technology that is centuries old, you’d think there wouldn’t be much room for innovation in the industry. But you’d be wrong.

Whether its the use of amagnetic materials like silicone in movement components or experimenting with new ways to track and display time, luxury watch brands are constantly locked in a battle of one-upmanship trying to create the next hook to lure in buyers.

And judging from IWC’s latest innovation, it looks like the next front in the luxury watch wars is finding new ways to make your watch glow in the dark.

IWC’s Bright Idea

Over the weekend, the Schaffhausen-based brand slyly unveiled a new technology to the world by strapping a new prototype on the wrist of brand ambassador and F1 superstar Lewis Hamilton at the 2024 Monaco Grand Prix. Keen observers recognized that Hamilton’s all-white wrist candy wasn’t part of IWC’s catalog, and the brand soon revealed the watch had even more going on behind the scenes — or, rather, in the shadows.

lewis hamilton rides a scooter wearing an iwc watch — In a clever bit of viral marketing, Lewis Hamilton was spotted around the Monaco Grand Prix wearing the new IWC concept watch.

Hamilton’s prototype was created to show off a new proprietary material that IWC is calling Ceralume. Created using a mix of ceramic power and Super-LumiNova pigment, the patent-pending material will allow IWC to craft ceramic cases that absord light and glow in the dark just like the Super-LumiNova paint we’re accustomed to seeing on hands and indices.

IWC’s engineering division, XPL, went through many iterations in its attempts to create Ceralume before coming up with a mix that was completely homogenous in appearance. The brand claims the watch, when fully charged, will emit a bright blue glow in darkness for over 24 hours.

For Hamilton’s prototype, a Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41, the Ceralum case is accented by a white rubber strap and white dial and hands that are also fully lumed with Super-LumiNova, creating the most effective “night vision” watch I’ve ever seen.

two white lumed iwc watches lay next to each other — With a lumed case, dial, hands and strap, it’s hard to imagine a watch glowing any brighter than the IWC Ceralume concept.

They Just Keep Glowing and Glowing

Ceralume is just the latest and brightest innovation when it comes to mechanical watch light technology, as other brands have been pushing the limits of lume in recent years.

Fully-lumed dials, for example, are hardly anything new. James Bond wore a TAG Heuer “Night Diver” in 1987’s The Living Daylights, and the brand resurrected the watch back in 2021. Zodiac just last week released its own fully-lumed dive watch as a new version of its top-spec Super Sea Wolf Pro-Diver. Then there’s A. Lange & Söhne, which has been blending generous lume treatments with high horology for years with its Lumen models.

glowing zodiac watch on a mans wrist — Fully-lumed dials, like the one seen on this new Zodiac release, have existed for more than four decades.

Lume-ceramic hybrid materials have also gained traction in recent years, with several third-party supplier producing their own versions for different brands. Globolight is favored by H. Moser & Cie. and Christopher Ward, Lumicast shows up in Farer watches and has been used by IWC for luminous dials in the past, and Hyceram is preferred by MING for the luminous ceramic rings and hour markers in its watch’s signature lumed sapphire crystals.

All of these companies claim the ability to create luminous ceramic in any shape, but none of them, to my knowledge, have shown the capability to create anything as large or complex as a fully luminous ceramic case like Ceralume.

We have, however, seen fully luminous cases before, though only in composite materials (e.g., types of plastic), never ceramic (AFAIK). Bell & Ross, most notably, launched the BR-X5 Green Lum last year featuring a fully-lumed green case made from a luminescent composite called LM3D. The French brand frequently experiments with lume in its aptly-named Lum series of watches, such as the BR 03-92 Full Lum which features both a luminous dial and glowing rubber strap.

bell and ross watch glows on a mans wrist — Bell & Ross released a fully-lumed composite case last year.

The amount of experimentation required to create Ceralume, along with the high-end nature and costs of the materials involved, signals to me an uptick in brands’ competitiveness to see who can innovate the most regarding a watch’s nighttime visibility.

It will be interesting to see what IWC does with Ceralume in the future, and also what creations the brand’s competitors come up with in the light technology space. One thing is for certain: The future of the watch industry has never been brighter.