News · Bell & Ross

Bell & Ross takes both its GMTs green, and only one of them is built for the dark

A 41 mm BR-05 with a three-coat sunray dial at A$8,990, and a 500-piece BR-03 covered in C3 lume at A$7,700, both good for 54 hours and 100 metres.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 4 min read · 18 August 2026

• Bell & Ross has released two green travel watches at once, the round-shouldered BR-05 GMT Green Steel and the squared-off BR-03 GMT Green Lum limited edition.
• The BR-05 builds its green through three lacquer passes over a sunburst base, while the BR-03 coats every numeral and index in Super-LumiNova C3 under a ceramic bezel.
• The BR-05 GMT Green Steel is A$8,990 on its steel bracelet and the BR-03 GMT Green Lum, limited to 500 pieces, is A$7,700 on rubber and fabric.

Green stopped being a risk somewhere around 2020

There was a stretch, and if you were buying watches then you will remember it clearly, when a green dial was what a brand did to prove it was paying attention, and half the industry managed one inside about eighteen months of each other. Most of those have quietly fallen out of the catalogues since, which is what makes it worth noticing when a maker comes back to the colour deliberately, with two watches that want it for completely different reasons, as Bell & Ross has done with the BR-05 GMT Green Steel and the BR-03 GMT Green Lum.

The two sit at opposite ends of what the brand does. One is the rounded-square integrated-bracelet piece that Bell & Ross built to be worn with a jacket, and the other is the flat instrument case the whole brand was founded on in 1992, when Bruno Belamich and Carlos Rosillo started making watches that looked like the gauges in front of a pilot. Putting the same complication in both, in the same colour family, is a neat way of showing how differently those two cases behave.

Three coats of lacquer, and a flange that does the actual work

The BR-05 measures 41 mm across and 11 mm thick, which for a case with this much shoulder is the difference between something that sits under a shirt cuff and something that catches on it every time you reach for a coffee. Bell & Ross builds the dial colour in three passes, a sunburst metallic base, then a green-tinted lacquer over it, then a clear gloss on top, and the result reads closer to the skin of a green olive than to the flat forest tones the industry got sick of.

The travel function is handled at the edge rather than on the dial itself. A rhodium-plated flange carries the 24-hour scale, split into a green half and a silver-grey half so a glance tells you whether it is the middle of the night wherever you have left the second hand pointing. That is a genuinely useful piece of design on a watch whose dial is already busy with applied markers, and it keeps the centre clean.

The square one is built for the dark, not for the office

The BR-03 GMT Green Lum takes the other route entirely. Its 42 mm case is 11.3 mm thick and topped with a bidirectional rotating bezel carrying a polished black ceramic ring, and every numeral and index on the dial is coated in Super-LumiNova C3, the brighter and greener of the common grades. The dial itself is green with a vertical black gradient, so in daylight it reads as a fairly serious tool watch and at night it turns into something else.

Look closely at the seconds hand and you will find the tip shaped like an aeroplane, which on any other brand would be a novelty and here is just the house being consistent with itself. The hour, minute and 24-hour hands are done in black gloss with the same C3 treatment. Both watches are rated to 100 metres, which is the sensible number for a watch like this: not a diving credential, just permission to stop thinking about the rain.

Two calibres, both giving you the same Sunday

Bell & Ross has used different movements in each. The BR-05 runs the automatic BR-CAL.325-1 and the BR-03 the BR-CAL.303, and both are quoted at 54 hours, which is enough that a watch taken off on Saturday evening is still running when you pick it up on Monday, though not by a comfortable margin. Both let you jump the GMT hand independently of the hour hand, which is the setting behaviour you actually want when you land somewhere and only the local time has changed.

The BR-05 shows its automatic winding rotor through a sapphire back, and the case is finished in alternating satin and polished surfaces with a screw-down crown protected by a guard. The BR-03 keeps its back solid and puts the drama on the front instead. I go back and forth on which approach I prefer, and at the moment I lean towards the BR-03, because a watch this legible does not need me to look at its movement to be convinced.

Rubber, fabric or steel, and what each does to the wrist

The BR-05 comes on either green rubber or a satin and polished steel bracelet with a folding buckle, and the bracelet version is the one Bell & Ross has priced here. The BR-03 arrives on a black rubber and synthetic fabric combination with a steel pin buckle, which suits a square case better than a bracelet ever has, because the flat lugs give a bracelet nowhere graceful to go.

If you want the green to be the point, take the BR-05. If you want it to disappear all day and then announce itself at two in the morning, the BR-03 is the one. Neither is trying to be the other, and that is the most encouraging thing about the pair.

Bell & Ross BR-05 GMT Green Steel and BR-03 GMT Green Lum pricing and availability

The BR-05 GMT Green Steel is reference BR05G-GN-ST/SST and is listed on Bell & Ross's Australian store at A$8,990 on the steel bracelet. The BR-03 GMT Green Lum is reference BR0393-GN-ST/SRB, limited to 500 pieces, and is listed at A$7,700 on its rubber and fabric strap. Both were showing as unavailable to order on the Australian site at the time of writing, so it is worth asking a boutique about allocation rather than waiting on the web page.