One thing that is really important to a watch is the Lume/Luminescence of the watch.

What is Watch Lume?

You might not have heard the term lume before, but it is short for luminescence. The lume of the watch is a significant component of the watch that can definitely sway someone’s opinion of the watch and be the make or break as to whether they wear the watch as a daily watch or whether they choose not to purchase it.

The watch’s lume is the glow around the watch hour and minute hands and sometimes the hour indices over the watch to make it easy to read during the night and places where there is limited sunlight. 

 

Based on this, some of the most important characteristics of the lume is the particular brightness of the lume and how easily readable when it is needed.

 

However, lume does not last forever as it decays over time so another important characteristic of watch lume is how fast it decays and if it will be able to last all night so you can wake up in the middle of the night and check what time it is easily.

 

How to Charge Lume

For most watches, the lume on the watch consists of photoluminescent material (like strontium aluminate) which is typically charged during sunlight by absorbing light and then re-emits that light. This lume could be either green (most common), blue, or some other specialized color depending on the watch and the specific materials being used.

 

Testing the Watch Lume

Now that we have discussed the basics of the watch lume, lets talk about the specific test that I created to get a better idea of the lume on my Breitling SuperOcean Heritage II.

Even though charging the lume is usually done through the sun and in regular daylight, that is not precise enough and it is quite erratic in terms of quality depending on the time left in the sun. To make things even more complicated, if I charged it while it was still daylight out, I couldn’t really get a good picture of the lume of the watch since it is hard to find a dark room.

 

So to tackle this issue, I used a UV Flashlight to charge the lume on the watch. If you aren’t aware of this technique, UV flashlights generally with a range of below 400nm wavelengths do a great job to charge the lume on the watch extremely fast and I find it to generally last longer than traditional fluorescent lights to charge the lume (any significant source of light will charge lume, but sun is the best source).

 

I bought my specific UV flashlight from Amazon, but feel free to look for the cheapest type of UV Flashlight you can find.

I didn’t really have a specific reason I bought that specific flashlight aside from the fact that it had a good number of reviews and seemed larger and more powerful than some of the other very cheap ones without jumping into the higher end more pricey ones.

 

I used the UV flashlight directly on the face of the watch for 30 seconds which lights up the lume on the watch like a sun and then I turned off the lights to see how the lume looks at night.

 

Then, I tested how long the lume lasts until it is barely noticeable. Watch the video embedded above for the entire video, but here are the specific important timestamps.

 

 

You can see the drastic change in the lume amount and how quickly it decays. After about a minute it gets to about regular lume amount where it is easily readible in the dark. However, after about 10 minutes, it does get fairly difficult to read the watch at night especially in a pitch black room.

 

Unfortunately, the battery of my camera ran out after 43 minutes, but as you can see, the majority of the lume decays after 30 minutes.

 

Let me know how you like the test and if you have any suggestions for future tests! If you liked this test or my videos, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, leave me a comment, and drop a like! 

 

Also, if you are interested in where I got my replica Breitling SuperOcean Heritage II, check out this post. 

 

Check out my social media in the links above and definitely check my out on Instagram since that is my preferred social media.

 

I am going to be making a full blown review of this watch so let me know what questions you have of this watch so I can answer it in the review.