Watches with luminescent backlight

Luminescent coating

— a special coating (colloquially — "phosphorus") that can glow in the dark. It is applied to the hands, and most often — also to the dial marks.

This method of illumination has received nowadays the most widespread. The luminescent coating is notable for its low cost and can be used even in the simplest and most inexpensive watches; and power is not required for such systems, so they can be used with any type of mechanism. At the same time, this option has a noticeable drawback: for effective operation, the coating must first be “charged” under the sun or another source of bright light; but this "charge" is enough for an average of 5 – 6 hours in the dark, and already in the first couple of hours the brightness of the glow drops noticeably.