A pale, clouded shape has appeared across the glass and will not come away. It looks like frosting applied to one patch of an otherwise clear pane. Cleaning achieves nothing. Somebody has probably attempted a blade on it and made matters slightly worse.
This is acid etched graffiti. A corrosive gel has been applied to the surface and left to work, biting down into the glass itself. There is nothing lying on top to be lifted off, which is exactly why every attempt so far has come to nothing.
The pane is recoverable in nearly every case. We restore it in situ, generally within the same working day, for a small proportion of what a replacement unit and its installation would cost.
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Most Of The Glass Here Is Not On A Street At All
This is the point that separates Canary Wharf from everywhere else we work, and it is the one a contractor pricing the job as a shopfront will get wrong.
A large share of the retail and hospitality glazing on the estate sits below ground, inside climate controlled malls. Cabot Place, Jubilee Place and the retail levels beneath the towers are interior environments reached through the station concourses and the walkway network rather than off a pavement. There is no kerb to work from, no van to park at the door, and no daylight.
The practical consequences are specific and they shape the whole job.
Everything arrives through the service route. Equipment comes in via the loading bays, the service corridors and the goods lifts, booked in advance, not carried in through a mall entrance during opening hours. That has to be arranged with estate management before anybody sets out.
Mall trading hours are the constraint, not daylight. An underground retail level has no natural quiet period at dawn. The genuine window is after the malls close, which is when we normally attend, with the work finished and the area cleared before they reopen.
Containment matters more indoors. Slurry and water on a polished interior floor in a mall is a slip hazard in a way it is not on a pavement. Our containment indoors is tighter than anything we set up outside, and the floor around the working area goes back exactly as it was.
Above ground is a different problem again. The external elevations are curtain walling and podium glazing rather than shopfronts, much of it above the reachable line, and several elevations face the water with restricted quayside behind them. Access there is planned with equipment and permissions agreed in advance rather than improvised.
Recent Acid Etched Graffiti Removal Projects
Nobody Works Here Without The Paperwork
The estate operates one of the more controlled contractor regimes in the country, and that is not an obstacle so much as a filter.
Expect vetting, passes, induction, defined access routes and, in places, escorted access. Method statements and risk assessments are lodged in advance as a matter of course. Permits are required for work in many locations and they define both the area and the hours. A contractor turning up on spec with a van and a bucket does not get past the first barrier, and quite rightly.
We supply the documentation in advance, complete whatever induction the estate or the building requires, and work to the permit as issued rather than asking anybody to stretch it. If you tell us who manages your building, we deal with them directly and start the access arrangements while the quotation is being prepared.
Where We Get Called Out Around Canary Wharf
The subterranean retail levels. Unit frontages, mall screens and food and drink glazing beneath the towers, worked after closing through the service route.
Canada Square and the podium. Ground and low level glazing around the square, reception screens and the entrances serving the towers above.
Churchill Place and Bank Street. Corporate reception glazing and street level elevations, with the coated and specified glass typical of buildings of this generation.
Westferry Circus and the western approach. Elevations facing the water and the quayside, where access has to be planned rather than assumed.
West India Quay and the dockside frontages. Restaurant and bar glazing on the quay, with a completely different trading pattern from the office estate behind it.
The station and walkway network. Concourse and interchange glazing carrying continuous flow, with its own permit regime layered on top of the estate's.
Wood Wharf and the newer buildings. Recently completed ground floor retail and residential entrance glazing, frequently still within defect liability arrangements that make restoration preferable to intervention.
Specified Glass In A Tower Estate
Glazing across this estate is engineered rather than bought off a shelf. Low emissivity for thermal performance, solar control on the exposed elevations, anti-reflective where a reception or a retail frontage needs to be seen into, laminated where security or safety requires it. Each of those carries a functional coating, and on many units that coating occupies a face that matters.
Restoration removes an extremely thin layer from the surface of the pane. Where that surface carries a coating, working through it does not repair anything. It destroys the coating and leaves a panel reading differently in colour and reflectivity from every panel around it, which on a repeating curtain walled elevation is conspicuous from the far side of the square and considerably worse than the original mark. It may also bear on the performance assumptions sitting behind the building's warranties.
Identification therefore comes before pricing. What the glass is, what it is coated with, and where the damage sits in relation to that coating. The answer goes to you in writing, including the cases where the honest answer is that a particular panel needs replacing rather than restoring.
Replacing It Versus Restoring It
| Fitting new glass | Restoring the existing glass | |
|---|---|---|
| Timescale | Weeks, longer for coated or oversized units | Usually a single overnight window |
| Underground retail units | Manoeuvring a pane through service routes and goods lifts | Technician and kit in, work done, out before opening |
| Access permissions | Extended permit, loading bay, crew and vehicle | Short permit, small footprint |
| Coated and specified glass | Specification has to be replicated exactly | Existing unit and its performance retained |
| Matching a curtain walled run | New glass alongside weathered glass | Original panels kept throughout |
| Meanwhile | Hoarded in a mall or on a corporate frontage | Nothing covered at any stage |
| Cost | Full price of the units and their installation | Up to 90 per cent less |
The access row carries more weight here than the cost row for most building managers. There is a fuller breakdown at glass replacement vs protection: the true cost, and the decision is set out at should I replace or restore etched graffiti glass.
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Etching, Scratching Or Paint
Three kinds of damage look alike at a distance and none of them is treated the same way.
Paint or marker rests on the surface. The colour is opaque, the edge is defined, and a fingernail climbs onto it. It responds to the correct solvent.
Acid etching is within the surface. Pale and clouded yet still translucent, faintly gritty at precisely the level of the surrounding glass. The outline generally feathers where the gel travelled before being cleaned off. Against an illuminated interior it becomes far more pronounced than it looks from outside, which is why front of house teams usually notice it first.
Scratching has been cut in mechanically. Bright, narrow and linear, with a fingernail dropping into the groove.
A photographic comparison is at glass scratching vs acid etching and the frosted appearance is explained at white frosty window graffiti. For how this has spread, see the rise of acid-etch vandalism in London.
When It Is Reported
Treat visible residue as a live chemical. Etching gel is corrosive to skin and eyes. Inside a mall that means restricting access to the frontage until it has been dealt with, not simply briefing the unit's staff.
Nothing sharp, nothing abrasive. A scraper adds permanent scratches to a pane that would otherwise have recovered, and wiping wet residue carries it onto adjacent glazing that was undamaged.
No proprietary graffiti removers. They have nothing to act upon, and on coated or specified glass an unknown product introduces a second risk on top of the first.
If there is residue and it is safe, rinse it with plenty of cold water, gloved and with eye protection, letting it run off rather than dragging a cloth over it.
Capture dated images of each damaged panel ahead of anything else, taken externally and internally. Across a repeating elevation that set of photographs is usually enough for us to price the entire job without sending anyone to survey it.
Register it with the police as criminal damage. No insurer will progress a claim without that reference. There is a step by step at what to do when your shop window is vandalised.
How The Restoration Is Carried Out
Specification check. Float, toughened, laminated, coated, mirrored, sealed unit or security rated, and which face carries the damage. Nothing proceeds until that is settled.
Depth assessment and a concealed trial area. We establish how far the etch has travelled and prove the approach on a small section out of sight before committing to the full panel.
Protection and containment. Frames, gaskets, seals, manifestation, applied film and signage masked. Indoors the floor is protected and the working area is bounded so that nothing wet reaches a polished surface outside it.
Graded abrasion. Successive abrasive stages, each finer than the last, lift a quantity of glass too small to see, carried well beyond the mark so the worked zone fades rather than ending at a boundary. Confine the work to the lettering and the result is a shallow depression that distorts everything seen through it, which on a flat modern panel is unmistakable and difficult to correct.
Cerium oxide finishing. The residual haze is taken out under wet cerium oxide, judged from where light passes through the pane rather than where it reflects.
Assessment across the elevation. Each finished panel is judged beside the ones we have not touched, viewed externally, internally under the lighting, and off axis, until the whole run looks like a single sheet rather than a repair among originals.
A single panel is normally completed within three hours, with larger elevations sequenced across the access windows available. Both stages are written up in full, the removal at acid etched graffiti techniques and removal methods and the finishing at how to polish shopfront glass to optical clarity.
The limits are stated upfront. An etch that has gone unusually deep, a unit whose seal has already failed, or a coating positioned directly in the path of the work can each mean the panel genuinely needs replacing. That verdict is issued in writing at assessment rather than discovered partway through.
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What We Restore Around Canary Wharf
- Laminated shopfront and lobby glazing across mall units and tower receptions.
- Float and low iron glass in retail displays and podium level glazing.
- Toughened glass in automatic doors, lobby screens, walkway balustrades and shelters.
- Curtain walling and spandrel panels at podium and low level.
- Mall screens, unit frontages and internal partitions below ground.
- Sealed double glazed units, restored entirely from outside with the cavity left as manufactured.
- Mirrors and mirrored panels throughout lift interiors, washrooms and lobby feature walls.
- Frosted, etched and manifestation glass, where the original finish has to be recreated instead of removed.
- Lobby thresholds, floor edges and cladding in polished granite and polished marble.
- Stainless steel and polished metal on frames, fascias, handrails, lift doors and barrier surrounds.
Every polished face is vulnerable to the same product, and an elevation or a mall frontage is normally worked along rather than marked once. Where glass, stone and metal are all involved we deal with the entire frontage within one attendance.
Who We Work For At Canary Wharf
Estate management and building managers. Mall, podium and reception glazing, quoted panel by panel with reporting formatted for recharge and audit.
Corporate occupiers. Reception and street level glazing restored outside core hours, with RAMS, inductions and permits handled in advance.
Mall retail and food operators. Unit frontages worked after the malls close and finished before they reopen.
Dockside bars and restaurants. Quayside frontages scheduled around service rather than around us.
Managing agents across multiple buildings. One point of contact, consistent photographic reporting and consolidated invoicing.
Who Carries The Cost
On this estate the answer normally runs through the building rather than around it. Glazing forming part of the envelope, the mall fabric, entrance screens and common parts generally sit with the landlord or estate and are recovered through the service charge, while glazing to a demised unit sits with the occupier. Those boundaries are not always where people assume on a building of this type, which is why we quote panel by panel with each identified by position, so the split is visible on the page rather than negotiated afterwards.
Do the sums on insurance before anyone notifies. Malicious damage is covered by most commercial policies, but what matters is the excess, and one restored panel will often sit beneath it. An entire elevation, or a run of mall units, changes that calculation entirely. Either way the dated photographs from both faces and the written works description arrive with the job.
Stopping It Recurring
Getting the panel clear is where it ends for today only. Nothing about it discourages a repeat, and glazing seeing footfall on this scale rarely gets marked just the once.
Film fitted over the outer face is designed to be destroyed instead of the glass. Stripping and refitting it is a short job costing a small share of a fresh restoration. In a mall that gap widens considerably, since a film swap fits comfortably inside one overnight closure while a full restoration eats the whole of it. On coated, low iron or anti-reflective units the film has to be specified with care so that clarity and colour rendering survive, and that deserves a proper discussion rather than whatever is on the van.
The full account sits on our anti-acid etched graffiti protection page, taking in the mechanism behind it, how long a fitted film lasts, what fitting it costs and what it does to the appearance of a window. There is sector specific guidance for corporate office glass protection.
Areas We Cover Next To Canary Wharf
For the whole picture on the service, including our process video and the full FAQ, see our main acid etched graffiti removal page.
Canary Wharf Acid Etched Graffiti Removal: Frequently Asked Questions
Can the panel be restored or does it need replacing?
Restored, almost always. Only a very thin skin of the glass has been attacked, and the work takes that skin off evenly across the affected zone and polishes the clarity back. The exceptions are an etch that has run unusually deep, a unit already carrying some other defect, or a coating lying directly in the way.
Our unit is in one of the underground malls. How would you even get equipment in?
Through the service route, booked in advance. Loading bay, service corridor and goods lift rather than carried through a mall entrance during trading. We arrange that with estate management before attending, and we work after the malls close so the area is clear before they reopen.
What about water and mess on a mall floor?
Containment indoors is tighter than anything we set up on a street, precisely because a wet polished floor is a slip hazard. The working area is bounded, the floor is protected, and it goes back exactly as we found it.
Will you be allowed on the estate at all?
Yes, with the paperwork in place, and we treat that as part of the job. Method statements and risk assessments are supplied in advance, our technicians complete the required induction, and we work to the permit as issued. Tell us who manages the building and we deal with them directly.
The damage is on a high level elevation. Can you reach it?
With the right access equipment and permissions agreed beforehand, yes. Podium and low level glazing is straightforward. Anything higher, or any elevation facing the water with restricted quayside, is planned before attendance rather than improvised on the day.
Our glazing is coated. Is restoration appropriate?
That turns on which surface the coating occupies relative to the etch. Cut into a coating and it is gone, leaving one panel that reflects and colours differently from every other on the run. The specification gets confirmed before anything starts, and we will tell you outright if a particular panel should not be attempted.
Could this affect our facade or sealed unit warranties?
Restoring the outer face leaves the seal intact and the cavity undisturbed, so of itself it does not. Where a coating or a stated performance specification forms part of the unit we raise it before starting so the position can be confirmed with whoever holds the warranty.
Several panels on one elevation are marked. How is that priced?
Panel by panel, with the access and permit cost shared across the attendance rather than charged repeatedly. Where an elevation cannot be finished in one window we sequence it so the most visible panels are completed first.
Can you match the finish across a repeating run?
That is why each treated panel is checked against its untreated neighbours before sign off. A curtain walled run has to read as a single surface, so it is assessed from outside, from within against the interior lighting, and at a low angle.
Will the treated area be detectable?
No. We carry the work far enough beyond the damage, thinning it out as we go, that there is no line anywhere for the eye to settle on. What you should be wary of is anyone who polishes just the tag itself, because that leaves a slight bowl in the panel which bends every reflection crossing it.
There is scratching as well as etching.
Both are addressed in the same attendance with the same graded abrasion and polishing. Depth governs what is achievable, and a very deep gouge occasionally sits beyond recovery.
What about stone lobby floors and metal door furniture?
The same gel damages any polished face, so granite and marble thresholds and cladding, steel frames, handrails and lift doors are all affected and all recoverable. Multi surface damage is handled in one visit.
What does it cost?
Once a replacement is costed honestly, the units themselves, getting access, the permits, the crew and the weeks the frontage sits hoarded, restoration lands up to 90 per cent under it. Our price moves with how many panels are involved, how much of each is damaged, how deep the etch runs, what the glass is specified as, and whether film follows. You have that figure in writing before we begin. No lazy contractors. No hidden fees.
Is it recoverable through the service charge?
Where the glazing forms part of the common parts, the mall fabric or the building envelope it usually is, subject to the lease. Quoting panel by panel makes that split straightforward to evidence, and the photographic record is supplied in a form suitable for audit.
Can you cover several buildings for us?
Yes. You get one named contact for every building, identical reporting across all of them, and one invoice rather than several.
How do we start?
Photographs of each damaged panel, plus the name of whoever manages the building. From the images we can normally say what the damage is and put a figure range on it right away, and with the manager named we can open the access conversation at the same 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
Other London Locations We Cover
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