Before starting the ageing you need to ask yourself what story your watch will tell. That's an important bit,you want your watch to be a story teller. Was your watch spend decades in a desert sun? Was it salvaged from a sunken ship? Or maybe sat in a dark safe for years? Once you know what you are trying to achieve, there are different ways to age the watch (case, dial, hands).
For example if a watch sat in the safe, the case will be in pristine condition, but lume will be darkened. Desert sun will bleach the insert, lighten a shade the dial colour, lume will appear yellowish.
Ageing watch is a lot of fun and everyone should attempt to destroy a perfectly fine watch once in their life
Some good points been discussed earlier regarding lume ageing, so I will add some that where not mentioned:
lume can be brushed with iodine (needs to be diluted a lot),
painted over with copic pens (these are fun to work with and you can actually choose the shade you want),
you can also bake hands and dial in an oven (this one is time and temperature sensitive - it's way too easy to overcook the dial to a point when paint starts to flake),
hairspray will also turn dial into matte and add a slight yellowing to the lume.
weathering kits are also fun to work with, especially if you are going for water damaged looks.
Nevertheless, all these methods will kill the lume, so another option is to relume hands and dial to look aged but retain glowing properties.
