The Rolex Crown Explained

What is the crown of a watch?

A watch crown is the small button on the side of a watch case used to set the time, wind the movement, and adjust features like the date or moonphase. Typically located at 3 o’clock, the crown is essential for controlling the functions of both mechanical and automatic watches.

Different materials used on Rolex watches

Rolex started making luxury watches back in the 1940s for the public, with the Datejust being one of the first models they released. The Datejust comes in stainless-steel or ‘Rolesor’ two-tone steel and yellow gold. They even released a full yellow gold version of the Datejust, which is pretty hard to find nowadays. 

Since Rolex uses a lot of different materials on their watches such as steel, steel and gold, white gold or platinum, there are some different crowns on the watches as well. We’ll walk you through the facts.

Markings on the Rolex crown

The Rolex crown features the well-known Rolex logo, but also some other details, telling you exactly which crown they’ve used and what material is used. If you own a Rolex or you’re planning on buying one, you can now take a closer look at the crown. You can maybe see small dots, bigger dots or even dots with a little dash underneath the dots. What do they mean? 

The little dots (with or without dash) will tell you that your watch has a Twinlock or Triplock-crown. 

The singular dash, one dot or two dots mean that your watch has Twinlock technology. Two dots mean that your watch is made from whitegold. One dot means it is made of platinum.

Three dots mean that your watch has Triplock technology. When the middle dot is bigger then the rest, your watch is whitegold. When the other two are bigger your watch is platinum. With We’ve put together a simple and easy overview for you to check out what crown, material and lock is used on your Rolex watch:

The difference between Twinlock and Triplock

With the introduction of the Rolex Oyster, this was the first ever waterproof watch ever produced. Since then, Rolex used their Twinlock-crown on the Oystercase to prevent water from leaking into the movement, thanks to the screw-down winding crown. With the two 0-ring gaskets made from synthetic materials they created two sealed zones with the Twinlock-crown. 

As Rolex needed to step up their game when it comes to water-resistance, they’ve introduced the Triplock-system. You might guess already: this crown features three sealed zones and made its debut on the Sea-Dweller diver’s watch.