Lume? I see no Lume!

[shedlock2000]

I understand that the lume on Rolex watches has changed alot over the years, i have personaly had a T<25 no date sub, and can definatly see the difference to the super luminova. But many have posted on here the poor Lume brightness. I am curious as to why this is?

Do other watches have better lume, and if so, why? They persumably use the same super luminova Rolex does.

I recall somewhere someone saying 11 coats of lume make this xxxx much brighter. Why does rolex not 'fill' the white gold markers with lume then instead of painting, would surely be better than 11 coats (dont call me surely)

Why is the new DSSD equiped with blue lume, pardon me for being stupid, but blue is in the lower range of the light spectrum making it harder to distinguish from the dark, in the great depths (to which no one will probably wear the DSSD) would this not make it harder to see than the green/yellow lume? And where does blue lume come from, why was this not offered in other watches? I know very little of other high end watches, but cant recall having seen any other colour lume than yellow/green.

So TRF, help me out on this one?

[SPACE-DWELLER]

Rolex watches are excellent in many ways, but I must admit/agree that the lume quality of Rolex watches is not as good as the one of for instance Omega watches.

The blue lume of the DSSD (the Milgauss GV has blue nightglow on the 3, 6 and 9 markers, too, btw.) is supposed to be actually more easily picked up my the eye than the conventional green one.

But coloured SuperLuminova is also reported to less effective than the conventional type.

See this section about Rolex Watch Lume.

In the part of the article ("Here is a brief overview of the various Luminous Materials." and downwards), I link to another article (this one) where it says:

"One nice attribute of SL is that it can be combined with various colour pigments, that change the material's appearance in daylight as well when shining in the dark. However, the colour pigments also reduce the material's luminescence effectiveness."