How to Make a Cheap Watch Look Expensive

Put the same watch on two people and it can look like two different prices. One wears it sliding loose over the hand, scratched and smudged, with the date three days behind. The other wears it sized to the wrist, clean, on a strap that suits the clothes. Nothing about the watch itself has changed, and yet the second one looks expensive.

That gap is the subject of this guide. Choosing a watch with the right design matters, and we cover that in what makes a watch look expensive. But once it is on your wrist, these nine steps do more for it than another hundred dollars would have.

1. Size the bracelet properly

This is the single biggest improvement and the one most people skip. Watches ship with the bracelet long enough for a large wrist, so on most people they slide around, rest on the hand and spin. A loose watch looks borrowed. Removing one or two links so that the watch sits just above the wrist bone, with a finger's width of slack, changes the whole impression.

You can do it at home with a pin pusher and ten minutes; our guide on how to adjust a watch bracelet walks through it, including the difference between pins and screws. Take links out evenly from both sides of the clasp so the dial stays centered. If you would rather not, any watch repair counter will do it quickly, usually for a small fee. Lucky Fours sells an adjustment tool on its store if you own several bracelet watches.

Watch Index · prices checked October 9, 2026

The watches in this guide, ranked

Every watch this guide mentions, ranked by Value Score or by what one watch costs today with each store's current offer counted.

2. Or replace the bracelet with a strap

A cheap bracelet is often the weakest part of a cheap watch: light, rattly, with a stamped clasp. On a round watch with standard lugs, a good leather or suede strap costs less than a dinner out and can make the whole watch look more refined. Brown leather dresses a watch up, a grey or navy fabric strap dresses it down, and both remove the rattle. Measure the lug width in millimeters first, the gap between the lugs where the bracelet attaches, and buy a strap of exactly that width.

This does not work on integrated bracelet watches, where the bracelet is part of the case design. On those, sizing is everything.

3. Clean it

Fingerprints on the crystal, grime in the bracelet links and a film of soap on the case back are what make a watch look old. Polished steel shows everything. A microfiber cloth after wearing takes ten seconds. Every few weeks, a soft toothbrush with a drop of mild soap and lukewarm water lifts the dirt from between the links; dry it thoroughly afterward. Keep water away from the crown and do not submerge any watch unless you know its rating. The full method is in our guide to cleaning a stainless steel watch.

4. Set it, all of it

A watch showing the wrong date, or a day date showing Tuesday on a Friday, looks neglected in a way that nothing else does. Set the date after the first of every month with 30 days or fewer, and set the time a minute ahead of your phone if you like being early. On a day date watch, the day and date are changed separately; our guide on setting a day date watch explains the order and the hours to avoid.

5. Choose where it sits

A watch should sit just above the bone at the outside of your wrist, not on it and not halfway up the forearm. Worn there, the dial shows when you reach for something and disappears under a cuff when you do not. With a shirt, the cuff should cover most of the watch at rest, which is one reason slim watches look more expensive with tailoring than thick ones.

6. Match the metals

If you wear a belt buckle, a ring or cufflinks, match the watch metal to them. Steel with silver, gold tone with gold. Mixing is fine when it is clearly deliberate, for example a two tone watch with both, but an accidental mix of a gold watch and a silver buckle reads as careless. For women, the same applies to bracelets and rings worn on the same hand.

7. Match the watch to the clothes

The most expensive looking watch is the one that suits what you are wearing. A dive style watch on a steel bracelet looks right with a T shirt and wrong with a dinner jacket. A slim dress watch looks right with a suit and a little precious with gym clothes. You do not need a different watch for every outfit, but two or three that cover your week make each one look intentional. Our guide on matching a watch to your outfit sets out the pairings, and how many watches you need makes the case for a small rotation.

8. Protect the surfaces

Scratches accumulate fastest on polished surfaces and on the clasp, which drags across desks every time you type. Take the watch off for gym sessions, home repairs and anything involving tools, and lay it face up on a soft surface rather than tossing it onto a hard one. A watch that has a few years of wear on it can still look well kept; a watch that has been knocked about for three months cannot.

9. Store it properly

Put the watch somewhere soft and dry when you take it off, separate from keys and coins. A small watch roll or a box with a cushion is enough. Keeping watches together in a drawer is how bracelets scratch dials and crystals scratch each other. Our guide to storing watches covers this in more depth.

What will not help

Some upgrades are not worth it. Aftermarket bezels and dials usually make an affordable watch look modified rather than expensive. Polishing out scratches on a coated watch can remove the coating. And spending more on a strap than on the watch rarely pays off visually; a well fitting plain strap does more than an exotic one.

If you have done all nine and the watch still does not look right, the problem may be the design rather than the care. The details that matter most, from dial texture to case size, are in our guide to cheap watches that look expensive.

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