Glashütte Original

ei8htohms
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that's hard to say

Hi Nicolas,

There is absolutely some truth to the fact that the lubricants in watches are sensitive to light.  Well, ok, let me be more accurate:  The manufacturers of watch lubricants believe them to be sensitive to light and recommend storing all lubricants away from light sources.  Some service centers keep them in refrigerators as well and ideally they should be discarded and replaced if not completely used after a year or so. 

Lubricants degrade and eventually cause the watch to require service assuming nothing else fails first.  Whether this happens in 3 years or 15 years is something of a crap shoot however.   Is it likely that having a lot of the jeweled bearings and (particularly) the escapement exposed to light will cause the oils to degrade more quickly?  Sure, it probably is.  I've never seen or heard of any studies into the phenomenon though, so the extent to which it is a "real" vs. theoretical concern is unknown to me. 

All other things being equal, I certainly wouldn't design a watch with exposed components thinking that I was making it more reliable, you know?  I don't think you're likely crippling the reliability though either and for many folks, having the watch stop and require service after 4 years instead of 5 might be a satisfactory trade off for getting to admire the mechanism for those 4 years.  And let me again reiterate that I have no idea if you will necessarily be shortening the service interval or by how much.

_john