Rolex Day-Date 36 118235

A checked version of this page, approved on 9 August 2026, was based on this revision.

Day-Date -> 118235

The 118235 is the Everose Day-Date 36, the rose-gold President of the 6-digit era. Everose is Rolex's exclusive pink-gold alloy, introduced in 2005 and formulated to hold its colour where ordinary rose gold fades, and the 118235 is the fluted-bezel Day-Date that wears it. It is the warm-metal counterpart to the yellow-gold 118238, on the same 36mm case and caliber 3155, and it is most associated with the chocolate-brown dial that became the signature Everose President. It ran until about 2019, when the caliber-3255 Day-Date 36 replaced it.

Core facts

detail	value
reference	118235
family	Day-Date (Day-Date 36, 6-digit)
production	2000 to about 2019 — conventional 18k pink gold early, Everose (as 118235F) from the mid-2000s
movement	caliber 3155, 31 jewels, 28,800 vph, ~48h, double quickset, Parachrom hairspring, COSC
case	36mm 18k Everose gold
crystal	sapphire
bezel	fluted
bracelet	Everose President with concealed Crownclasp, solid links
dial	chocolate/brown (signature), sundust, champagne, ivory, rhodium, mother-of-pearl, meteorite, diamond-set
crown	Twinlock screw-down
metal	Everose — Rolex's exclusive fade-resistant 18k pink gold (introduced 2005)
siblings	118238 (yellow gold), 118239 (white gold); 118205 (smooth Everose), 118135 (leather-strap Everose)
successor	128235 (Day-Date 36, caliber 3255, from 2019)

Where it sits in the line

The 118235 is the Everose member of the 6-digit Day-Date 36, the generation that from 2000 gave the President broader lugs, solid links and a concealed Crownclasp. The 118238 is the yellow-gold fluted volume reference, the 118239 the white gold, and the 118235 the Everose. Within the Everose references it is the fluted one; the smooth-bezel Everose is the 118205 and the leather-strap Everose the 118135. It ran until about 2019, when the caliber-3255 Day-Date 36, the 128235, took over.

Production outline

The 118235 held the rose-gold slot of the 6-digit Day-Date 36 from 2000, and for its first years it was cast in conventional 18k pink gold, with pink-gold examples dated 2000 to 2004 appearing in the auction record. Everose arrived in 2005, and the Everose examples carry the 118235F suffix, catalogued from about 2007. The run closed around 2019. No Rolex production figure has surfaced.

The date of the movement change is sometimes given as 2015. That conflates the 36mm Day-Date with the Day-Date 40, the 40mm model that replaced the 41mm Day-Date II in 2015 and took the caliber 3255 that year. The 36mm 118235 stayed on the caliber 3155 until the 128235 replaced it in 2019.

Movement notes

The 118235 runs the caliber 3155, the double-quickset Day-Date movement, with 31 jewels, 28,800 vph, a roughly 48-hour reserve and COSC certification, and both the day and the date set from the crown. Later production carries the Parachrom hairspring that Rolex rolled across the line from around 2005. It is the same movement the yellow-gold 118238 carries, and the 118238 entry covers the caliber in detail. On the 118235 the case metal and the dial do all the differentiating.

Dial map

A gem-set chocolate dial — diamond markers and ruby baguettes on the warm Everose ground, a variant of the signature chocolate face.

The chocolate-brown dial is the signature of the Everose Day-Date, a warm sunburst brown against the pink gold with applied baton markers. It reads as Everose on sight, the way an ice-blue dial reads as platinum, and it carries the strongest following on the reference in both plain baton form and in gem-set versions with diamond markers and ruby baguettes. Beyond it the 118235 was offered in sundust, champagne, ivory, rhodium and black, in mother-of-pearl and meteorite, and in diamond-set dials. Everose flatters the warmer faces, which is why chocolate and sundust are the two most associated with the reference. The deeper dial taxonomy spanning the President line is on the 1803 entry.

Case, bezel, crystal, and crown

The case is the 36mm Everose Oyster of the 6-digit Day-Date, solid Everose throughout, with the broader lugs of that generation, a sapphire crystal and Cyclops, a Twinlock screw-down crown and a screw-down caseback. The bezel is fluted, the Day-Date signature, here in Everose.

Bracelets, end links, and clasps

The 118235 wears the Everose President bracelet, the three-piece semi-circular-link bracelet with the concealed Crownclasp and the solid links of the 6-digit era, heavier and more rigid than the 5-digit bracelets. As with any President, a clasp date code dates the bracelet, which may be older or newer than the head, and the cross-family detail sits on Reference:Bracelets.

Special branches

Everose, the fade-resistant rose gold

The reason the 118235 exists is the metal. Ordinary rose-gold alloys lose their pink over time as the copper in them oxidises, and Everose is formulated to hold its colour where they dull. What produces that stability is disputed. Rolex's own materials page gives the alloy as at least 75% gold and 20% copper with palladium and indium and calls the exact formula a secret, while the published collector literature credits a small platinum addition. Rolex casts it in its own foundry and introduced it in 2005. Of the references that wear it, the Day-Date is the one it defines most clearly.

Market

The 118235 is a liquid modern reference that trades through the dealer and certified-pre-owned market. Everose Day-Dates rarely come under the hammer, and the major houses route them through private sale instead. The one auction-house example that surfaces is an Antiquorum rosé diamond-dial 118235, estimated around CHF 17,000–21,000. On the secondary market a standard Everose 118235 sits roughly in the USD 30,000–50,000 range, a slight premium over the yellow-gold 118238 on the strength of the rose metal, with the diamond-set and special dials, meteorite and gem-set chocolate among them, reaching higher.

Related references

Day-Date 218206 — 2008–2015
Day-Date 218238 — 2008–2015
Day-Date 118208 — 2000–2019
Day-Date 118238 — 2000–2019
Day-Date 118138 — 2013–2019
Day-Date 18208 — 1988–2000