The Black Market: Watchonista’s Top 10 Black-ish Timepieces

Black is the new black. The year 2024 has seen an increasing demand for dark watches.

Why? Maybe because formal timepieces have been trending, and what could be more stylish than a little black watch? However, even if sport chic is your game, darker dials provide maximum legibility when contrasted with luminescent markers and hands.

Inspired by Black Friday, we’ve assembled a roundup of recent noirish watch releases (plus a few classics of the genre) from across every price point. And if you’re in the mood to hunt for holiday deals, who knows? Maybe you can score a bargain.

The discovery of radium early in the 20th century paved the road to all-black watches. The luminescent material provided high contrast and improved readability against a dark dial.

The trend really took off during WWII when the military started requiring the material in their specs. Black dials soon became de rigueur for divers, and some of the most iconic watches of today developed for frogmen (think the Panerai Radiomir, Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, and Rolex Submariner).
 

Last month, Tudor revisited this era with the launch of the Pelagos FXD GMT “Zulu Time” Aéronautique Navale – a new take on their military issue watches from the 1970s and ’80s. The watch has a matte black dial with beige Super-LumiNova-applied indices that glow blue in the dark, an orange GMT hand with green emission lume matching the GMT bezel, and red accents for the product name on the dial.

No, it’s not completely black – the bezel and the 42mm case are forged from grey titanium, and the woven fabric strap is flight-suit green – but this watch fits the black bill. Plus, you can always switch out the strap to give it an all-black look if you’re feeling particularly moody.
 

Beyond tool watches, black watches also appeal to minimalists. In 1947, Nathan George Horwitt designed a time-only watch for Movado with a black dial and strap and a single metallic dot at twelve o’clock as the only element to help you navigate the hours and minutes, and the Museum Watch was born.
 

This model is one of those rare watches that has never gone out of fashion. If anything, it’s even more blacked-out! The most recent version of the Movado Museum Classic comes with a black PVD-finished stainless steel case and mesh bracelet.
 

While black dials and straps remained popular post-war, it took a couple of decades for cases and bracelets to catch up. In the 1970s, the German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld was often spotted wearing an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak 5402 that he simply painted black.

The problem with such a crude aftermarket customization is that the black paint will chip or scratch at the slightest impact and possibly damage the metal, as well. Now, of course, brands have embraced composite materials, such as ceramic, that have the color baked in, so to speak.
 

The most recent generation of Royal Oaks from Audemars Piguet includes a 41mm Royal Oak Selfwinding Chronograph fully crafted in black ceramic and contrasted with subtle pink gold accents. This all-black version marks the collection’s latest design evolution.
 

The original Porsche Design Chronograph 1 was one of the first commercially available fully blacked-out watches to hit the market.

Designed by Ferdinand Alexander “Butzi” Porsche in 1972, the Chronograph 1 employed PVD (physical vapor deposition, a coating technique used in automotive and aviation industries) to bond a thin layer of material to metal at the atomic level.
 

Fast forward decades later to 2024, we have the most recent iteration of the model with the Chronograph 911 GT3 Limited Edition designed in collaboration with Hodinkee.

Using the original’s vertically-oriented layout for the two chronograph registers and the small seconds sub-dial at 9 o’clock, this new version has a 40.8mm diameter and 14.15mm thickness; however, the case and bracelet have been upgraded to hard-wearing, ultra-light titanium clad in a matte-black Titanium-Carbide coating.
 

Paying homage to the rare, almost mythical, all-black “Dark Lord” Monaco of the 1970s, TAG Heuer released the Monaco Chronograph Special Edition in 2022. This elegant 39mm version features a DLC titanium case housing the iconic manufacture Calibre Heuer 02.
 

Though this limited edition has since sold out, we would have been remiss not to include it. This model is arguably one of the coolest blacked-out timepieces of all time! What better way to spend Black Friday than scrolling through secondary selling sites searching for this elusive black whale?
 

The world’s first watch to use lightweight ceramic for both its case and bracelet was the Rado Ceramica. Launched in 1990, the Ceramica was notable for its square-shaped black case, crown, and bracelet made from solid ceramic bricks.

Rado continues to push the boundaries of the material, most recently with the new 37mm True Square Thinline Own the Night. This model borrows the squared-off shape of the Ceramica but with an edgier sunray dial contrasted with a punchy turquoise or orange lacquered hour and minute hands.
 

The procedure for making high-tech ceramic falls into true rocket-science territory, with a case that now stands at 1,250 on the Vickers scale (a measurement of a material’s resistance to indentation, on which 316L stainless steel rates a 140 and diamonds a 10,000). Plus, the case’s highly polished finish allows light can dance across the links of the matching highly polished ceramic bracelet.
 

If you’ve learned anything from this roundup so far, it’s that black is anything but basic. Technically, black isn’t even a color – it absorbs all light without reflecting anything.

This was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in 2022 when H. Moser & Cie. introduced the Streamliner Chronograph “Blacker Than Black” concept watch featuring a dial (plus the hour and minute hands) painted in Vantablack, which is a material made up of millions of carbon nanotubes that capture 99.965% of light photons.
 

Basically, this watch was the physical embodiment of Nigel Tufnel’s famous line from This Is Spinal Tap (1984): “How much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.”

And now, microbrand Venezianico (founded in 2017 by brothers Alberto and Alessandro Morelli) has just released its own take on this type of blacked-out concept: the Arsenale Ultrablack.
 

However, given the fragility of the Vantablack material, the Arsenale Ultrablack features a dial hand-painted in Musou Black (a water-based acrylic paint that absorbs 99.4% of light) and makes the already minimalist design of the Arsenale collection even more.
 

Coming full circle, another reason black is back is the resurgence of military-inspired timepieces. Newer collectors are embracing these retro tool watches as they’re being reimagined in modern materials.

British brand Bremont’s Supermarine is one such example that’s been revamped with an entirely ceramic-made, monobloc case – a first for the manufacture. It features a titanium build that extends to the new knurled unidirectional bezel.
 

This high-performance dive watch offers 500 meters of water resistance and a helium escape valve. It comes set on a black and grey fabric NATO style strap, meticulously woven on 18th-century Jacquard French looms.