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While round watches are undoubtedly the most popular shape today, watch cases come in many shapes and sizes. Today, watchmakers are exploring unique watch case shapes to create a distinct visual identity for their brands, and customers are becoming more adventurous.
This guide to watch case shapes explores 10 different shapes you might see in the market and shares the most iconic models for each shape. Don’t be afraid to go beyond classic round watches and wear something different.
There are many reasons why most watches are round. Because dial hands move in a circle, it’s complementary to read time circularly. Also, the gears and wheels that power a watch’s movement are round, so they easily nestle in a round shape. Historically, wristwatches evolved from pocket watches, which were designed to be miniature clocks that traditionally were round. Most sports watches are round, and Patek Philippe’s Calatrava is one of the most classic round dress watches. There are even brands that mostly make watches with round cases, like Rolex.
Rectangular watches are also quite popular. An iconic rectangular watch is the Cartier Tank watch. True to its name, the design was inspired by the Renault tanks used in World War I. The Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso is my favorite example of a sharp rectangular case.
A tonneau case has a rectangular shape with rounded vertical edges. Sometimes, it is called a barrel shape because “tonneau” means “barrel” in French. Richard Mille is a master of tonneau watches, and Franck Muller makes many as well. This shape lets watchmakers create unique designs for the dial.
As the name suggests, these watches have cases with eight sides. First popularized by Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak, octagonal watches are practically a category unto themselves these days; examples include Bulgari’s Octo and Girard-Perregaux’s Laureato collections. Chanel uses a more subtle type of octagonal shape in its Première collection. It looks more like a rectangular watch with cut corners, but it’s technically an octagon.
Breguet’s Reine de Naples watch is one of the first — if not the first — wristwatches ever created. In 2023, Cartier relaunched the Baignoire watch on a bangle bracelet, and it quickly became one of the hottest watches of the year and reinvigorated consumer interest in oval watches.
The Tag Heuer Monaco is one of the most recognizable watches ever, partly because watches with a square case are so unusual. Nomos Glashütte uses a square case in its Tetra collection. Bell & Ross is known for its square watches, and the Santos de Cartier is another famous square watch.
There are many types of asymmetrical watches — some are more pronounced than others. We don’t consider round watches with slides or pushers on the left side to be asymmetrical cases.
Some watches might first appear to be round, but they are actually asymmetrical. We frequently see this subtle asymmetry in chronograph watches, which have pushers on the crown side. Watchmakers make this side a little thicker to accommodate and protect the pushers. Many dive watches are asymmetrical because they have a protective crown guard. The Omega Speedmaster, Rolex Submariner, Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore, and Panerai Submersible are examples of asymmetrical dive watches.
Asymmetry can be part of the mechanics, too. The Ballon Bleu de Cartier encloses the crown within the design, so it appears perfectly round, but the right side is bigger than the left to accommodate the crown. Some of Greubel Forsey’s watches have asymmetrical cases because they contain too many complications to include in a round case.
East-West watches can be any elongated shape, like a rectangle or an oval, that is set horizontally instead of vertically. Girard-Perregaux’s Cat’s Eye watch is a great example. The watch becomes more unusual and eye-catching simply by rotating the case 90 degrees. Piaget also uses East-West dials in its Extremely Lady and high-jewelry watches. This orientation is very dramatic with a contrasting dial, like these stone dials from Piaget.
Cushion-shaped cases are square with rounded edges and named for their pillow-like design. They aren’t very common today but are considered more elegant than a classic square watch. The rounded edges soften the sharpness of the square and make the watch look more refined. Cushion-shaped watches can have round or cushion-shaped dials. Laurent Ferrier has made cushion-shaped watches a signature of his brand, like this Galet Square watch. The Historiques American 1921 from Vacheron Constantin has a cushion-shaped case with a twist. The crown is located on the top right corner, and the dial is angled diagonally. This unique design lets the wearer read the time without turning the wrist. Panerai famously uses the cushion case on its Lumior and Radiomir watches. Hermès combined a cushion case with a round dial in its H08 collection, which highlighted the contrasting shapes.
Some watches are instantly recognizable for their case shape because they are completely unique, like Cartier’s iconic Crash watches. These surrealism-inspired watches are produced in extremely limited quantities and have become some of the hottest watches in the vintage market today. Hermès also uses unique case shapes in some of its watches. The Heure H watch is shaped like the letter H, and the Kelly watch is shaped like a padlock.
Many jewelry watches have unique shapes, too. Bulgari’s Serpenti watches are an iconic unique watch; the case shape is reminiscent of a snake’s head. Van Cleef & Arpels uses its iconic four-leaf clover design for its Alhambra watches, a great jewelry-inspired watch. Some high-jewelry pieces create wild designs using diamonds and gemstones that might make a watch look like it has an unusual case, but there’s typically a small round dial hidden amongst the sparkling stones. This Graff high-jewelry watch is a perfect example of a unique shape with a round dial, and this Piaget watch has an East-West oval dial.
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That the case is a vital component of a watch sounds…pretty obvious, given that it protects the movement inside, but it’s also important from a design standpoint. A case, probably more than any other aspect of a watch, has the most bearing on a timepiece’s overall look, and some timepieces are instantly recognizable only because of their case shapes. But as distinctive as a watch case can look, it will almost always fall into one of a handful of categories. What follows are those categories, so when you hear someone refer to a watch as having a “tank” or “tonneau” case you can know what the hell they’re talking about.
Rolex
The vast majority of wristwatches out there use a type of watch case which we’ll simply refer to as “round” – no fancy names or interesting stories here. Round cases just make sense when a circular display is the clearest way to show and read time, and as such you’ll see everything from dress watches to divers to field watches to chronographs in them. Round cases generally exude a sense of minimalism, indicating that there was no unnecessary material used.
Cartier
The Cartier Tank, released in 1917 and with a shape inspired by the Renault tanks used in WWI, was more or less rectangular, but it proved so influential that many enthusiasts colloquially refer to similarly-shaped dress watches as “tanks.” Regardless, the Tank came about early on in the wristwatch’s existence, and many other watchmakers like Jaeger-LeCoultre, Hamilton and Gruen also produced rectangular designs, making the shape incredibly popular during the early decades of the 20th century. Rectangular watches are much less common today, and those that do exist are mostly throwbacks to those early wristwatches.
TAG Heuer
Like the rectangular watch, the square watch was far more common back in the early and mid-20th century. The style was common on slim, elegant dress watches from brands like Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin, though as the ’70s came along, some watchmakers utilized the square case for sports watches – the Heuer Monaco is probably the most recognizable example. Square watches have made a small but notable resurgence as watchmakers continue to pay homage to that era in watchmaking and because today, where the round watch remains supreme, a square makes much more of a statement.
Panerai
You can think of the cushion-cased watch as a squircle, characterized by a squarish profile but with rounded edges and bowed-out sides. The style was featured prominently on the original Panerai Radiomir in the 1940s, and subsequently, it’s most commonly been seen on divers and other sports watches, though you’ll find it on dress watches from time to time. The term cushion is often used interchangeably with “tonneau,” and while there are some similarities, they are technically two different shapes.
Oris
The word tonneau is French for “barrel,” and the overall profile of a tonneau is a rectangle-shaped case with rounded corners and bowed-out edgeswhich looks, in fact, barrel-like. So the tonneau is a close relative to the cushion case, but the overall shape is taller and longer. On dress watches, this gives the timepiece some art decco vibes, though the style was exceedingly common on chronographs and dive watches from the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Omega
Most asymmetrical cases look, at first glance, like your typical round case. But look closer and you’ll see the crown-side of the case is ever-so-slightly wider than the other. The idea is to provide a little extra shrouding for the watch’s crown and stem (and pushers, if its a chronograph), much like the crown guard on a dive watch. One of the most recognizable watches of all time, the Omega Speedmaster, in fact, has an asymmetrical case, but other tool watches – the single-crown Universal Geneve Polerouter, the Benrus Type 1 and the CWC Chronograph to name a few – feature a similarly asymmetrical case design.
Hamilton
This is more of a “choose-your-own-adventure thing” than a category with specific parameters. While most watch cases tend to fall into one of the aforemtioned, there are some that completely throw convention out the window. The advent of the bold, avant-garde case shape might be best characterized by the Hamilton Ventura, as well as the other Richard Arbib watch designs from the ’50s. Today, avant-garde cases are most commonly seen in high-end mechanical timepieces from independent brands like MB&F and Urwerk.