How to Clean a Watch

Clean the band, not the watch. That is the short answer and it is the one almost every guide gets backwards. A watch case and crystal pick up fingerprints and dust, which a dry microfibre cloth removes in ten seconds. Theband is where sweat, skin oil, soap residue, sunscreen, makeup and dead skin accumulate — and it is the part that starts to smell, to discolour, and to leave a mark on the wrist. So the method depends entirely on what the band is made of, and the rest of this page is organised that way.

Two rules apply before any of it. First, check the water-resistance rating before you let the watch near a tap. A 30m watch is not rated for running water at all and plenty of dress watches are 30m; our water-resistance explainer covers why the number is not a depth. Second, if the watch has a screw-down crown, make sure it is screwed fully in first. An unscrewed crown is an open door, and water that gets in that way is not covered by any rating.

The one thing never to do

Never put a watch in an ultrasonic cleaner at home, and never use alcohol, acetone, nail-polish remover or an abrasive cream on any part of it. Ultrasonic cleaning is a jeweler’s tool used with the movement removed; run a whole watch through one and the vibration works water past gaskets and can loosen dial markers and hands. Solvents attack the plasticised coatings on resin straps, craze acrylic crystals, strip plated finishes and dry out leather. Abrasives put a permanent haze on a mineral or acrylic crystal. Warm water, a drop of mild dish soap and a soft brush does everything that needs doing.

Band by band

The two rows worth reading twice are leather and mesh. Leather is porous: it absorbs sweat, and the single biggest thing you can do for a leather strap is take the watch off at night so it dries out, which roughly doubles how long the strap lasts. Mesh looks easy and is the hardest band on this list to keep clean, because every one of its hundreds of tiny links is a place for residue to sit. If you are choosing a band type for a gift rather than cleaning one you own, our band-types guide has the whole taxonomy with the ownership trade-offs.

The case and the crystal

Start dry. A microfibre cloth removes fingerprints from a crystal and a polished case and is all most watches ever need. For the gap between the case and the bezel, and the crevices around the lugs, use a soft toothbrush with the band removed and almost no water — the lug gap is exactly where skin and dust compact into a grey line.

On the crystal itself, the material decides what you can get away with. A sapphire crystal is a 9 on the Mohs hardness scale and essentially unmarkable by anything in a household. Mineral is softer and will scratch, and a mineral scratch is permanent. Acrylic scratches easily and — uniquely — can be polished back to clear with a plastic polish and a cloth, which is why an acrylic crystal on a cheap watch is less of a downgrade than it reads as. The full comparison is on our crystal page.

Never attempt to clean inside the watch. If there is dust on the dial or a hair under the crystal, the caseback has to come off, and that is a job for someone with the tools to reseat the gasket afterwards. Our servicing guide covers when paying for that is worth it.

Three watches that are easy to keep clean

If you are buying for someone who will not do any of the above — and most people will not — the band and the crystal choice does the work for them. These three come from our own registry and are picked on exactly that basis.

A resin strap and a 200m-rated sealed case: you can run the whole watch under a tap, soap it and rinse it with no thought at all. Nothing else on this site is this low-maintenance for this little money.

A sapphire crystal means the one irreversible cleaning mistake — a scratch — is effectively off the table, and 100m means a rinse is uneventful. The solid-link steel bracelet has few enough gaps to brush clean in a couple of minutes.

The reason this one is here is the quick-release spring bars: the strap comes off with a fingernail, so the leather can air properly and the case can be cleaned without the strap getting wet. It is also solar and sapphire, so there is no battery change and no scratching.

How often, realistically

Wipe the case and crystal with a dry cloth whenever you think of it. Clean the band monthly if it is steel, mesh, resin or nylon, and air a leather strap every night. Clean immediately — not monthly — after contact with sunscreen, insect repellent, chlorinated pool water or salt water; all four actively attack gaskets, plated finishes and resin, and salt water in particular should be rinsed off the same day. That is the whole maintenance schedule, and it is shorter than most people expect.

The picks above, by their published specifications

Read from our own registry, which records every spec against the listing or manufacturer page it was taken from. Where a source does not publish a spec we print that rather than guessing.