White gold gets the platinum roster with two dials removed. At 36mm the two cool metals are offered exactly the same grounds, in the same marker treatments, with one exception: ice blue and its set version belong to platinum and appear on no white gold reference at any point. Everything else is shared, blue ombre included. That makes the grounds they hold in common the only place in the model where two case metals can be compared with the dial held genuinely constant, and blue ombre is among the most useful of them, because a gradient shows what a case is doing to a dial more clearly than a flat color can.
The ground is a single blue laid so its density rises continuously from the middle of the dial toward the rim, with no seam anywhere in the transition. Blue carries that treatment better than most colors because it stays recognizable across a wide range of values, so the gradient reads as one color gaining depth rather than as two colors meeting. On white gold the effect runs cooler at both ends than it does on platinum, and the reason is the bezel rather than the case: this reference is fluted, and fluting throws light in narrow vertical lines that fall onto the outer edge of the dial where the ground is already darkest. The markers are applied Roman numerals in white gold, tall and narrow with fine serifs, standing proud with polished faces. They sit where the gradient has begun to darken, which is why they hold their edges without carrying any stones or outlines. The ring is interrupted at three by the date window. The case is 36mm with the wide flat lugs and low band the model uses throughout, and the President bracelet runs from the lugs in polished three-piece links. Fluting is the older of the two bezel treatments this model uses and the more demanding to execute in a white metal. The flutes are cut rather than pressed, and each facet has to meet its neighbors at a consistent angle for the ring to throw an even sequence of lines as the watch turns. On yellow gold a slight irregularity is masked by the warmth of the metal; on white gold, which reflects closer to neutral, it shows. The ring here is narrow relative to the case, so the flutes are short and steep.
An ombre ground creates one problem the flat dials never face, and it sits in the apertures. The day and date discs are printed in a single flat color, and a graded dial has no single color for them to match, so the value chosen can only agree with the dial at one radius and must differ everywhere else. Rolex sets it near the middle of the range, which means the discs read slightly lighter than the ground immediately around the openings, since both apertures sit well out toward the rim where the gradient has deepened. The frames absorb that difference, marking the boundary firmly enough that the eye reads two deliberate insets rather than a mismatch. The day is spelled out in full at twelve in words rather than three letters, which fixes the width of the upper opening across every dial in the model. Both discs change instantaneously at midnight rather than turning through the preceding hour, and the movement carries roughly seventy hours off a full wind. Eight grounds are built at this reference and the display never changes beneath any of them. Blue ombre is the one ground here offered both plain and set, while silver and white are never set and five grounds exist in set form alone.
Nine grounds are offered on white gold at 36mm and three references carry them: this one with a fluted bezel, 128349RBR with a set bezel and a choice of bracelet, and 128399TBR with a set bezel and the standard President. The dials are identical across all three, so the bezel and the bracelet are the only variables once the ground is settled. Within the roster, blue ombre is one of two grounds offered both plain and set, alongside pink, and the set version contracts to 36mm while the plain version reaches the 40mm case as well. Every ombre in the range takes Roman numerals and nothing else, which is true here and on the green ombre that yellow gold receives, so the marker treatment on this dial was never a decision a buyer could make. The white gold roster divides much as the platinum one does, which follows from their being the same list. Three of the nine grounds are the colorless universals, white, mother-of-pearl set with diamonds and the paved dial, and the remaining six make up the cool-metal group: blue ombre in both its forms, bright blue set, pink opal set, pink set and silver. Six of the nine are set dials, which leaves blue ombre, silver and white as the entire unset range on white gold at this size. That is a narrower field than a count of grounds suggests, and it is the reason a plain gradient dial does more work on this metal than the same dial would on yellow gold.
Blue ombre with Roman numerals on a fluted white gold case is the quietest configuration this reference offers, and it is the one that reads least like a decorated watch. Nothing on it is set. The bezel is textured rather than bright, the markers carry no stones, and the only thing asking for attention is a gradient that resolves properly in good light and disappears in poor light into what looks like a plain dark blue dial. That variability is the whole appeal for the collectors who choose it and the whole objection for those who do not. What is not in question is that this is the version of the ground that shows it best, because a set dial puts stones into the middle of the gradient exactly where the transition is smoothest and there is no way to add them without interrupting the thing they were added to.
