Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is a statement that can’t be truer in my opinion. The beauty of a watch lies in its dial. After that, everything else just seems to fall into place. You see, the layout, the style, and quite importantly, the colour of the dial are key when purchasing a timepiece. Ultimately, it is the dial that you will most undoubtedly be looking at more than any other aspect of the timepiece—so it has to be pleasing to the eye.
Watch dials incorporate many different features, including subsidiary dials, date, month and even year apertures, as well as measurement scales and moon phases. The backdrop settings for these features come in all sorts of colours, most commonly silver/white or black. The one that seems to draw your eyes’ attention, though, is blue… and there seems to be more of a variety to choose from nowadays, too.
Mostly you’ll see sports watches with either black or white/silver dials, bar a few such as the Omega Seamaster, which have featured blue dials for many, many years. Admittedly, they do look very cool. Typically, you’ll see more elegant dress watches with white/silver dials and even more so in vintage pieces, and I believe this was probably a ploy to make the watches look bigger, as dress watches were a lot smaller back then. That said, there are some stunning vintage pieces that feature black dials and the odd blue dial, too. But there is something about blue dials that just look so effortlessly cool when executed correctly.
Take a Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar Moon Phase Chronograph 5270, for instance. With a white dial, it appears to be more of a dress watch than a utilitarian timepiece. However, take a look at that same timepiece with a blue dial and it instantly becomes more multi-functional. Or take the newly released Omega Globemaster in stainless steel with a blue dial. Again, it just looks that much more versatile and is easily paired with more casual or sporty attire.
And that’s just it. Watches with blue dials simply seem to have more room for versatility, as opposed to their black-, white- or silver-dial counterparts. Not only that, blue dials can also look just as elegant and sharp and yet just seem to be more easy going. Make no mistake, not every watch produced with a blue dial has this capability—it also depends on the overall design aesthetics, too.
Take the aforementioned Omega Seamaster Diver 300 M with a blue dial as an example. It’s a sporty watch and no matter what strap you put on it, even when you’re dressed up, it will still look sporty. But then take another timepiece from Omega’s extensive range, such as the De Ville Hour Vision with a blue dial, and you have a much more versatile wristwatch. There is a fine line in getting this balance right when it comes to choosing a watch with a blue dial, but ultimately it all comes down to what you’re actually looking for.
