How to Store a Watch

Dial up, flat, dry, away from direct sunlight and away from anything magnetic. That is the whole answer for overnight storage and it covers every watch on this site. The interesting part is what changes when the watch sits for longer than a night, because an automatic, a quartz and a solar watch each want something different from a month in a drawer — and one of them can be quietly damaged by it.

A note on why “dial up”: lying a watch face-down puts the whole weight of the case on the crystal and the bezel, which is where every scratch on a stored watch comes from. Face-up on a soft surface, or on its side in a roll, and nothing touches the crystal at all.

Overnight, every night

Take it off. This is the one storage habit that measurably extends a watch’s life, and it has nothing to do with the movement — it is the strap. A leather strap that is worn twenty-four hours a day never dries out, and a damp strap stiffens, cracks and starts to smell in months instead of years. A fabric or nylon strap behaves the same way. Put the watch somewhere it cannot be knocked off a surface, dial up, and leave the strap open rather than buckled so air gets to the lining.

Two things to keep it away from. Direct sunlight, because UV fades a dial and dries leather — with one exception noted below. Anything with a magnet in it: speakers, laptop and tablet covers, handbag clasps, fridge doors. A magnetised mechanical watch does not break, but it can start running minutes fast per day, and the fix is a visit to a watchmaker with a demagnetiser. Quartz and solar watches are far less affected.

What each movement needs while it sits

The row with a real risk in it is quartz. A battery left in a watch that is stored for years can leak, and a leaked cell corrodes the movement around it — the one failure on this table that can write a watch off rather than merely inconvenience you. If a quartz watch is going into long-term storage, the battery should come out.

The row people worry about unnecessarily is automatic. An automatic watch stopping is not a problem; it is what the movement is designed to do, and it does no harm at all. Our guide to setting an automatic covers starting it again, and this one answers the question that comes next.

Why a watch winder is almost never the answer

A winder is a motorised box that rotates an automatic watch so it stays wound and keeps time while it is not being worn. It is genuinely useful for exactly one thing: a perpetual calendar or an annual calendar complication, where letting the watch stop means a fiddly, sometimes jeweler-assisted reset. Nothing on this site has one, and nothing in the price ranges we cover does.

For an ordinary three-hand automatic, a winder means the movement runs continuously for years while the watch is not being worn, which is wear accruing for no benefit, and it removes an inconvenience — winding and setting the time — that takes about twenty seconds. If someone owns one automatic they love, the winder is a nice object and a fine gift. As a solution to a storage problem, it is a $100 answer to a twenty-second question.

Storing a gift until the occasion

This is the version of the question that matters most on this site: the watch arrives in October and the birthday is in December. Four things.

• Open the box and check it now. Resist the urge to leave it sealed. Confirm it is the right reference, confirm it runs, and confirm the return window — which will very likely close before the occasion does.
• Size the band now too. If it is a link bracelet that needs a jeweler, that is a trip you do not want to be making in the week of the gift. Our band-resizing guide covers what you can do at home.
• If it is quartz, leave it running. Two months of battery is nothing, and a running watch on the day is a better unwrapping than a dead one. If it is solar, give it a few hours of daylight the week before. If it is automatic, expect it to be stopped and plan to wind and set it the night before.
• Store it dial up, in its box, somewhere dry and not in a loft. Attics and garages swing between temperature extremes and condense moisture, which is how gaskets age and dials spot.

The presentation side of the same problem — how to hand it over — is covered on our presenting guide.

Three watches that store well

If the watch is going to spend more time in a drawer than on a wrist — which is true of most second watches and most gifts — the movement choice is the thing that decides how annoying that is. These three come from our registry and illustrate the three outcomes.

Eco-Drive runs off light, so there is no battery to die in place and nothing to corrode. Leave it near a window for a day and it is ready. For a watch that is worn occasionally, this is the movement that asks the least of its owner.

A quartz watch stored for a couple of months is simply fine, and this one adds a sapphire crystal so a drawer full of other objects cannot mark it. The caveat is the one above: do not leave a battery in it for years.

An automatic in a drawer stops in a day or two, and that is normal rather than a fault. The Bambino winds by hand as well as from the wrist, so bringing it back takes twenty seconds of crown-turning rather than a wait.

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.