As the company that either invented or popularized the dive watch, the GMT watch, the first water-resistant watch, the first automatic watches, and much more besides, you could hardly downplay Rolex’s influence on watchmaking history. But while its iconic sports watches, like the Submariner, Daytona and GMT-Master are endlessly imitated, Rolex is not seen as a trendsetter, preferring to ignore passing horological fashions. It does its own thing, iterating carefully and minimally on its age-old templates.
Five years ago, however, Rolex introduced a collection so avant-garde that is still influencing creative decisions across the entire watch industry, and it did so in one of its least-heralded models: the Oyster Perpetual. The idea was so simple that we’ve barely noticed it become the industry norm: Instead of slowly rolling out new dial colours one at a time over a period of years—which was standard watch world behavior until that point—Rolex launched a whole set of colored dials in a complementary palette all at once.
The 2020 multi-color Oyster Perpetual collection that started the wave of watch-world bright dials.
COURTESY OF ROLEX
They were bright, bold and almost childlike in their purity: coral red, green, turquoise, pink and yellow. Rolex-watchers immediately hailed them as a tribute to the so-called Stella dial Day-Date watches of the late 1970s and 1980s—equally bright and unexpected, and evocative of a louche, sybaritic age. But there was something more basic, more essential and, at least theoretically, more attainable about the Oyster Perpetual collection.
It sparked imitators left, right and center—and still does. At last week’s Geneva Watch Days 2025, Zenith’s collaboration with Swiss furniture-maker USM would qualify as a textbook example: a full set of bold, block-colour dials in otherwise traditional stainless steel sports watches.
Earlier this year, Oris’s Big Crown Pointer Date hit a similar note. In 2023, arch-rival Omega debuted a collection of Seamaster Aqua Terra models with similar hues to Rolex’s opening salvo; other mid-level brands including Breitling and TAG Heuer have all created multi-colored families of stainless steel, time-only round watches in a similar mold.
Three years after Rolex, Omega followed suit.
Courtesy of OMEGA
Microbrands are in on the act, too: Split watches immediately sold out of its just-launched, searingly all-yellow Sub 7. Other brands have incorporated the idea into their own design language. Hublot gave us collections of block-color ceramic watches, taking the impact of a bright dial and flowing it into cases and bracelets alike. You’ll find the same principle at niche watchmakers like Meistersinger and start-ups like Norqain: it’s subtle, and doubtless many would deny the connection, but it’s undeniably a phenomenon that has exploded since 2020.
In fact, the trend has been so successful Rolex even returned to it this year, launching new versions of the Oyster Perpetual in lilac, beige and pistachio green.
“For years, Rolex communication was very stern, very institutional,” says Fabio Ciquera, an industry consultant who also teaches an MA course in luxury brand management at Ravensbourne University. “Its sponsorship reminded us of the establishment and elite. These new designs play a strategic role—as much as a collab between Louis Vuitton and Murakami—to inject newness into the brand. These may play an ‘anchor’ role in the mind of a new breed of clients who also value the unexpected more than the institutional.”
Then TAG Heuer joined the fray.
Courtesy of Tag
Indeed, Rolex’s dial designs have been more unexpected since the introduction of the 2020 collection, with rapidly discontinued (if not overtly limited) editions such as the Datejust with palm dial (made using eye-surgery lasers, no less), and the surprising, controversial “emoji” Day-Date from 2023. Then there was the Celebration, or “bubbles” Oyster Perpetual, a model that took all five colors from the origianl 2020 set and brought them together in one design—also now discontinued.
Ciquera explains that despite its market dominance, there is a chance Rolex might be feeling pressure to change its brand image. “[Its younger customers] will feel reassured that their brand of choice is also fun and unexpected, not just Wimbledon and elite,” he says. “At the higher end of the spectrum, we could say that Rolex may have felt the pressure of fun design at brands like Richard Mille, or interesting collabs between Casablanca & MAD Paris [who created a bold, multicolored Audemars Piguet Royal Oak] and felt like a new take on ‘fun’ would have benefit also. Especially considering the need of a renewed anchor to entice younger clients.”
Now Zenith is launching a brightly hued collection with colors designed to pop.
Courtesy of Zenith
The shift from incrementally building out a color range to introducing an entire palette in one drop brings additional design considerations. Each color must not only work in its own right, but in conjunction with the others—and the “bubbles” reference shows how carefully Rolex constructed the palette to begin with. As Professor Renzo Shamey, director of Color Science and Imaging Laboratories at the Wilson College of Textiles of North Carolina State University explains, different pigments and shades “flare” more than others (which may partly explain why the 2020 collection felt so impactful) and their harmonious interaction is dependent on factors such as relative size as well as theories of complementary colors.
Oris’s latest Big Crown takes its cues from the 2020 Rolex collection as well.
Courtesy of ORIS
“Color is influenced by the surrounding background and lighting and all sorts of things,” says Shamey. “Even when you control all of these variables, it is highly subjective because our perception of color is a very personal experience. From the point of production, the question is: How do we minimize issues associated with perceived color? If you can generate it in an isolated environment, that’s all good and great, but the color is going to sit in a context. So how is that going to match in that environment correctly?”
Shamey says that a brand can come up with a color that matches another one perfectly in one scenario, then change the setting and it doesn’t match at all. “We call that metabolism,” he says. “A single color can flare or not match from one setting to the other, while some colors are more color constant than others. Some purples or olives, or some mixed like khakis—if you change the illumination, they can shift quite a bit, while others are less susceptible.”
Microbrands such as Split are taking the vivid color styling idea beyond just the dial.
Courtesy of Split
Across the watch industry, brands have reached for this type of pastel shade recently, with pale purples, pistachio green and sandy beige popular beyond Rolex’s 2025 Oyster Perpetuals. Whether the shift from more constant, solid, emphatic colors to those more likely to shift or metamorphose says anything about buying habits in the watch industry is for now a matter of speculation, but dials that appear to change hue under different lighting have long been popular with collectors.
However, those hoping for an updated reissue of Rolex’s Celebration dial my well be disappointed. The challenge of combining such pastels could mean the brand will think twice about repeating the bubbles trick with its current generation of shades.
