When people wear a wristwatch, they normally wear it on their non-dominant hand, which for most of us means the left hand. But have you ever wondered why this is so? It isn’t that someone, somewhere, a long time ago just arbitrarily decided that this is what people should do, and it stuck. There are actual reasons for most people wearing a watch on the left hand, and once you hear what they are, it will make sense to you. If you’ve ever wondered, why do we wear a wristwatch on the left hand, below are five different reasons that may be of interest to you.
Five Reasons Why a Watch Is Worn on the Left Hand
1. It Is Very Practical
Think about it; wearing a watch on your left hand is a very practical decision. If you’re right-handed, you’ll always be doing things with your right hand, making it rather difficult to be looking at your right wrist every time that you want to see what time it is. If the watch is on your left wrist, you can do whatever you like with your right hand and still know what time it is at any given point.
In fact, wristwatches weren’t around until the Victorian era and some of the first people who adopted the new device were soldiers. When you’re on the battlefield, timing is everything, and soldiers finally had a quick and easy way to know what time it was so that their plans could be pulled off without a hitch.
2. It Is Easier to Protect the Watch
Because you do so much with your dominant hand, the watch will simply get banged up a lot more if you were to wear it on that hand. Your dominant hand does a lot throughout the day, including working with tools, running errands, cleaning your house, and dozens of other activities. When you do these things, your arm and wrist are likely to get bumped and hit quite a bit, and this can wreak havoc on your watch if it’s on your dominant hand.
Even though most watches have strong coverings for the face, known as crystals, they can still be damaged if they’re not provided a certain amount of protection and that won’t happen when you wear the watch on your dominant hand instead of your non-dominant hand. The non-dominant hand will simply protect the watch more than the dominant hand will.
3. The Watch Will Work Properly
Simply put, watches have delicate components on the inside and they must be worn the right way in order for those components to work right and give the wearer an accurate time. In short, this means your left hand. Watches, in other words, are simply made to be worn on the left hand — even if you’re left-handed — so that the watch is more accurate.
This is especially true if you wear a watch that has specialized features such as heart rate monitors, timers, stopwatches, and others. These days, features such as this are very common; in fact, many people specifically look for watches that have these special features. Because of this, it is important to wear the watch properly so that all of these features are more dependable and accurate. This can only happen while wearing the watch on your left hand.
4. It Is Easier to Wind the Watch
If you’re wondering about which wrist to wear a watch on, yet another reason to choose your left wrist is because all watches are made with the winder, known as the crown, on the right side of the watch. If you’re wearing the watch on your right wrist, you’ll likely have to remove it if you want to change the time or utilize one of its functions; however, this is not something you’ll have to worry about if the watch is on your left wrist.
With the watch on your left wrist, you can wind the watch with your right hand whenever you like and it’ll be very simple to do. Even left-handed people will find this easy to do because winding a watch and operating its settings isn’t difficult for anyone.
5. It Is Much Less Cumbersome
Finally, it is just less cumbersome and awkward to wear your watch on the non-dominant hand, which is almost always the left hand. If the watch is worn on your right hand, it will feel as though it is “getting in the way” frequently, but wearing it on your left hand means that you can do just about anything without being aware that your watch is even there.
You won’t notice it when it’s on your left wrist, whereas you’ll always be aware that it’s there when you’re wearing it on your right wrist. It may be psychological, but the truth is that wearing your watch on the left hand means that you can go about your life and barely even notice that you’re wearing a watch in the first place.
