If you trade on Brick Lane you already know the difference between the street art and the vandalism. Nobody here is calling us about a mural on Hanbury Street. They are calling because a tag has appeared on their shopfront glass overnight, it will not wash off, and it is the first thing every customer sees on the walk down from the Truman Brewery.
That milky, frosted mark burned into your window is acid etched graffiti. It is not paint and it is not dirt. It is damage to the glass itself, and no amount of scrubbing from your cleaners or your staff will shift it.
We restore it, in situ, usually the same day, for a fraction of what a new pane costs. No boarding up, no lost trading, no glazier lead time.
Do you need graffiti removed from your property? Get a fast, hassle-free quote today! Click here to get a professional graffiti removal quote or call us today on: 020 8050 5997
Why Brick Lane Gets Hit More Than Most Streets In London
Brick Lane is one of the few places in the country where a wall being painted is part of the attraction. That tolerance is exactly what makes the etched glass so frustrating for the businesses here. The visual noise on the brickwork means a frosted tag across a window barely registers as a problem to anyone walking past, right up until it is your window and your customers are squinting through it.
Three things concentrate the damage on this stretch in particular.
The late night economy. The bars around Dray Walk and Ely's Yard, the restaurants at the Banglatown end, and the 24 hour beigel shops at the top by Bethnal Green Road keep this street busy long after the shutters come down everywhere else. Etching paste takes a couple of minutes to apply and the person applying it is invisible in that crowd.
The shutters come up on Sunday. The market is the commercial peak of the week. Damage done on a Friday or Saturday night is sitting there for the single busiest trading day, in front of the largest audience of the week. That is why we take Sunday morning calls on Brick Lane and why we work Saturday nights for clients here.
The glazing itself. Warehouse conversions along the Lane and through the Truman Brewery estate have produced enormous areas of full height, single pane glazing. Big glass is expensive glass, it is usually bespoke, and it is the most attractive canvas on the street to somebody with a tube of etching paste.
Recent Acid Etched Graffiti Removal Projects
Where We Get Called Out Around Brick Lane
We cover the whole of the Lane and the streets feeding into it. The pattern of calls is consistent.
The Truman Brewery estate, Dray Walk and Ely's Yard. Gallery frontages, studio glazing, bar windows and the glazed units around the yards. High footfall, late hours and a lot of exposed glass.
The southern end towards Aldgate East. Restaurant frontages through Banglatown, where an etched window sits directly between a passer by and a dining room, and where the menu displays and interior lighting make the damage far more obvious after dark.
Cheshire Street, Sclater Street and Bacon Street. Independent retail, vintage and furniture units, many in converted stock with newer shopfronts fitted into old openings.
Hanbury Street and Fournier Street. The Georgian end of the area, where the buildings are listed and the glazing question becomes much more complicated. More on that below, because it changes the answer entirely.
Redchurch Street and the Shoreditch High Street approach. Higher value independent retail and flagship units, where presentation standards are unforgiving and a frosted tag on the glass is a genuine commercial problem.
Around Aldgate East, Shoreditch High Street and Liverpool Street stations. Anywhere with heavy pedestrian flow onto the Lane picks up damage at the approaches.
Listed Buildings And The Conservation Area: Why Replacement Is Rarely The Easy Option Here
This is the part most contractors will not tell you, and on Brick Lane it matters more than anywhere else in East London.
Large parts of this area sit within a conservation area, and the Georgian stock around Fournier Street, Wilkes Street and Princelet Street includes a significant number of listed buildings. The Jamme Masjid at the Fournier Street corner, a building that has been a Huguenot chapel, a synagogue and a mosque in its lifetime, is one of the most historically layered structures in London.
If your premises is listed, replacing a window is not a procurement decision. Alterations to a listed building can require listed building consent, and carrying out unauthorised works to a listed building is a criminal offence, not a planning technicality. Even where the glazing itself is modern, the frame, the shopfront and the opening it sits in may be protected. Getting consent takes time you do not have when your frontage is damaged and trading.
Restoration sidesteps the problem completely. We are not altering the building. We are removing damage from the existing glass and leaving the original fabric exactly as it was. For a listed shopfront that is not merely the cheaper option, it is frequently the only option that does not involve the conservation officer, a consent application and a boarded frontage for weeks.
If you are a managing agent or a landlord holding listed stock in the Fournier Street area, this is worth knowing before the next incident rather than after it.
Restore Or Replace? The Numbers For A Brick Lane Shopfront
| Replacing the glass | Restoring the glass | |
|---|---|---|
| Lead time | Days to weeks for a bespoke pane | Same day in most cases |
| Boarding up | Required while you wait | Never required |
| Trading through the Sunday market | Boarded frontage on your busiest day | Open as normal |
| Listed building consent | May be required | Not required, nothing is altered |
| Access and disposal | Lift or crew, old unit removed | Worked in situ, no waste |
| Typical cost | Full replacement cost of the unit | Up to 90 per cent less |
A large bespoke shopfront pane on the Lane runs into thousands of pounds once you have added the survey, the manufacture, the access equipment, the crew and the trading days lost behind a board. Restoration removes the damage from the glass you already have. We set the full comparison out in glass replacement vs protection: the true cost and walk through the decision in should I replace or restore etched graffiti glass.
Is It Etching, Scratching Or Paint? Check Before You Call Anyone
Three kinds of damage look similar from across the Lane and need completely different treatment.
Paint or marker. Run a fingernail across it. If you can feel the mark standing proud of the glass it is sitting on the surface. Coloured, opaque, sharp edged. Ordinary graffiti, and it comes off with the right solvent.
Acid etching. Pale and clouded, still letting light through, with a chalky feel that sits flush rather than proud. The edges usually blur where the gel ran before somebody wiped at it. Stand inside with the display lit and it will be twice as obvious as it is from the pavement.
Scratching. Sharp, bright, linear cuts from a blade, a stone or a key. Your fingernail catches in the groove.
Etching and scratching turn up together constantly around here, because the same person often carries both. We treat both in the same visit. Our full photographic comparison is in the glass scratching vs acid etching identification guide, and the specific frosted appearance is explained in white frosty window graffiti.
You Have Just Opened Up And Found It. What To Do First
What happens in the first hour affects both the repair and your staff's safety. Etching paste that has not been rinsed off is still active, and the products used are corrosive to skin and eyes.
Do not touch it with bare hands. Visible residue, paste or gel still on the glass should be treated as a live chemical. Keep staff and customers away from it.
Do not blade it or scrub it. Blades add scratches to a pane that already needs restoring. Scrubbing drags residue across clean glass and makes the damaged area bigger.
Do not reach for a graffiti remover. Solvents do nothing to etching and mixing an unknown product with a residual acid has no upside.
Do rinse with plenty of cold water if residue is visible and it is safe, wearing gloves and eye protection, flooding rather than wiping.
Do photograph it immediately. Dated photographs from inside and outside are what your insurer, landlord or managing agent will want, and they let us quote accurately without a wasted visit.
Do report it. Treat it as criminal damage and get the reference number, because your insurer will ask for it first. The reporting process is covered in what to do when your shop window is vandalised.
How We Restore Etched Glass On Brick Lane
Assessment and depth reading. We establish what the glass is, float, toughened, laminated, coated or a sealed double glazed unit, and how deep the etch has gone. Depth decides everything that follows, including whether restoration is viable at all.
Test area. On anything unusual we work a small discreet area first and check the result before committing to the full pane. Coated and low emissivity glass in particular needs to be understood before work starts.
Containment and protection. Frames, gaskets, seals, signage, film and manifestation are masked and protected. On a narrow pavement with Sunday market traffic, containment is not optional. Slurry stays in our control and off the footway.
Staged abrasion. We work through progressively finer abrasive stages, removing a microscopically thin layer of glass across an area feathered wide enough that no transition is visible. Working only on the tag itself leaves a dished, lensed patch that distorts everything seen through it. The eye picks that up instantly, and it is the single most common failure when this work is done by a general contractor.
Cerium oxide polishing. Final optical clarity is brought back with cerium oxide, worked wet and checked against transmitted light rather than reflected light.
Inspection from both sides. We check from inside and outside, in daylight and at an angle, because that is how your customers will see it.
Most single pane jobs on the Lane are finished in under three hours. The technical detail is documented in acid etched graffiti techniques and removal methods and how to polish shopfront glass to optical clarity.
Working Around Your Trading Hours
Brick Lane does not keep office hours and neither do we. For the bars and restaurants we generally work mornings before service. For retail we work early, or Saturday night into Sunday morning so the frontage is finished before the market opens. For the Truman Brewery studios and offices we work outside core hours so your people arrive to completed work rather than a work site.
We remove graffiti all day, every day, with same day response across E1, E2 and the rest of East London. If you have just found it, call and we will get someone to you. If it has been sitting there since last summer we can still almost always restore it, it simply takes longer.
Do you need graffiti removed from your property? Get a fast, hassle-free quote today! Click here to get a professional graffiti removal quote or call us today on: 020 8050 5997
What We Restore Around Brick Lane
- Laminated shopfront glazing, including large format warehouse conversion panes.
- Float glass and standard windows in period shopfronts.
- Toughened glass, including entrance screens and shelters.
- Sealed double glazed units, worked on the outer pane with the cavity left alone.
- Mirrors and mirrored panels in bars, restaurants and retail interiors.
- Frosted, etched and textured decorative glass, where the original finish has to be matched rather than polished away.
- Polished stone entrance surrounds, including polished granite and polished marble.
- Stainless steel shopfronts, door furniture and lift doors.
Where a frontage has been worked along and the damage crosses glass, stone and metal, we deal with all of it in one visit rather than sending you to three contractors.
Who We Work For On And Around The Lane
Independent retail and vintage. Your window is your entire shopfront marketing. We restore without boarding and without closing you.
Bars, restaurants and the late night trade. Morning work before service, and Saturday night work where the Sunday market is the priority.
Galleries and creative studios. Large glazed frontages restored to optical clarity, which matters when the glass is effectively part of the display.
Property and facilities managers. Multi unit and multi site portfolios across E1 and E2, with photographic before and after evidence suitable for insurers, landlords and service charge records, one point of contact and consolidated invoicing.
Landlords holding listed and conservation area stock. Restoration that avoids the consent problem entirely, documented for your records.
Who Pays? Leases, Insurance And Service Charges
On a commercial unit the answer usually sits in three places. Most commercial leases put the repairing obligation for the demised shopfront on the tenant and the structure and common parts on the landlord, so glazing to your own unit is normally yours and glazing to a shared entrance normally the landlord's, recovered through the service charge. Check the repairing covenant and the definition of the demise before assuming.
Malicious damage is covered by many commercial policies, but excesses vary and a restoration cost is often close to or below the excess. Several of our Brick Lane clients choose to absorb the cost rather than register a claim that affects renewal terms, and that calculation is far easier with a firm written quote in front of you. Whoever pays, every job comes with dated before and after photography and a written description of works you can hand straight to an insurer, a landlord or a managing agent.
Keeping The Next One Off Your Glass
Getting the frontage clear again is only half of it. With this much footfall and this many late nights, a pitch that worked once tends to get used again.
The practical defence is a sacrificial anti-graffiti film on the outer face of the glass. The next attack damages the film, not the pane, and the film is peeled and replaced in minutes at a fraction of the cost of another restoration. It is optically clear, so it does not blur your window or dull a display. Full detail is on our anti-acid etched graffiti protection page, along with how the film works, how long it lasts, what it costs and whether it blurs a shop window. For retail specifically, see protecting retail displays from glass vandalism.
Recent Work Nearby
Real jobs on real frontages, with the before and after photography from site.
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Areas We Cover Next To Brick Lane
For the full picture on the service, including our process video and the complete FAQ, see our main acid etched graffiti removal page.
Brick Lane Acid Etched Graffiti Removal: Frequently Asked Questions
Can acid etched graffiti really be removed from my shopfront, or do I need a new pane?
In the large majority of cases it can be removed. The etch sits in a microscopically thin layer at the surface of the glass, and restoration removes that layer and polishes the pane back to optical clarity. Replacement is only necessary where the etching is unusually deep or the unit is damaged in some other way, and we tell you which situation you are in at assessment, before any work or payment.
My premises is listed. Does that change anything?
It changes a great deal, and in your favour. Replacing glazing in a listed building can require listed building consent, and unauthorised works to a listed building are a criminal offence. Restoration alters nothing, so the consent question does not arise. Around Fournier Street, Wilkes Street and Princelet Street this is frequently the deciding factor.
How quickly can you get to Brick Lane?
We offer same day response across E1 and E2. If you call in the morning we can usually be with you the same day, and we take Sunday morning calls for the market traders and Saturday night work where the frontage has to be right before the market opens.
Can you work without closing us or boarding up?
Yes. All work is carried out in situ, on the glass where it sits. There is no boarding, no hole in your frontage, and in most cases no need to close. The work is contained and relatively quiet.
Will the restored area look different from the rest of the window?
Not when it is done properly. We feather the removal across an area much wider than the graffiti so there is no visible edge. The common failure is polishing only the tag, which leaves a dished patch that distorts anything seen through it. We check the finish from both sides and at an angle before calling it done.
What about the big single pane glazing in the Truman Brewery units?
Large format panes are exactly where restoration pays for itself, because they are the most expensive and slowest to replace. Size affects the time on site rather than whether the job is possible.
Can you treat toughened, laminated and double glazed units?
Yes, all three. Etching is almost always on the external face, so sealed units are treated externally without breaking the seal. Each glass type needs a different approach, which is why we establish what the glass is before starting.
Someone has scratched the glass as well as etched it. Can you do both?
Yes, and around here they nearly always arrive as a pair. The same abrasion and polishing sequence handles both. How deep the damage goes decides the outcome, and the occasional very deep gouge sits beyond recovery.
What about the mirrors and polished metal inside my bar?
The same products damage mirrors, polished stone and stainless steel, and we restore all of them. If the damage crosses several surfaces we handle it in one visit.
How much does it cost?
Restoration typically saves up to 90 per cent against replacing the same glass, once you account for the bespoke pane, access, labour, disposal and lost trading. The price depends on the size of the affected area, the depth of the etch, the glass type, access and whether you want protective film fitted afterwards. We quote in writing before we start. No lazy contractors. No hidden fees.
Will my insurance cover it?
Many commercial policies cover malicious damage, but excesses vary and a restoration cost is often close to or below the excess. We provide dated before and after photographs and a written description of works suitable for a claim, a landlord or a service charge record.
It has been there for months. Is it too late?
Almost never. A fresh etch is quicker and cheaper to restore than one that has weathered through a winter of rain and grit, but old damage is still nearly always recoverable. It simply takes longer.
Will it just happen again?
On this street, possibly. Taggers return to locations that worked. Sacrificial anti-graffiti film means the next attack damages the film rather than the pane, and the film is peeled and replaced quickly and cheaply. We fit it in the same visit as the restoration if you want it.
Do you work with managing agents across multiple units?
Yes. We handle multi unit and multi site portfolios with one point of contact, consistent photographic reporting and consolidated invoicing, which is how most of our Brick Lane and Spitalfields work is managed.
What happens when I call?
We ask what the damage looks like, what the glass is and where you are on the Lane. In most cases a photograph is enough for us to tell you whether it is etching, scratching or paint and to give you an indication of cost. We then attend, assess on site, confirm the price in writing and carry out the work.
Do you need graffiti removed from your property? Get a fast, hassle-free quote today! Click here to get a professional graffiti removal quote or call us today on: 020 8050 5997
Other London Locations We Cover
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