The shutter goes up and there is a pale, clouded mark sitting in the display glass. It looks like frosting applied to one patch and nothing else. It will not wash off, it will not scrape off, and anyone who has tried a blade has added scratches on top of the original problem.
That mark is acid etched graffiti. A corrosive gel was applied to the pane and left long enough to dissolve the surface, leaving microscopic pitting that scatters light rather than passing it. Nothing sits on the glass to be removed. The glass itself has been altered.
It comes out. We restore the pane in place, generally the same day, without removing the unit and at a small fraction of what replacing a specified security pane would cost you.
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Your Window Is Wired. Tell Us Before We Arrive
This is the first thing we ask on Hatton Garden and it is the question that separates a contractor who has worked this street from one who has not.
A jewellery frontage here is not a window with a shutter in front of it. It is an assembly. Rated laminated glass, frequently with an interlayer specified by an insurer. Applied security film on one or both faces. A grille, a shutter, or both. And very commonly, bonded directly to the pane itself, acoustic or vibration sensors forming part of a monitored intruder alarm.
That last element changes everything about how the work has to be arranged.
Abrasive work on a monitored pane will be detected. The whole purpose of a glass mounted sensor is to register vibration and the acoustic signature of glass being worked. A restoration is precisely that, sustained and deliberate, for a couple of hours. Without prior arrangement you are generating a confirmed activation and a response, at your cost and against your alarm history.
We do not touch a bonded sensor. Detaching one and reattaching it is the alarm installer's work, not ours. If a sensor sits within the area we need to treat, that has to be resolved with your alarm company before the day, not negotiated at the counter on the morning.
So the sequence is fixed. You tell us the frontage is alarmed. We establish where the sensors sit relative to the damage. You or we speak to the monitoring provider and the zone is put on test for the working window. Only then does anyone open a tin.
None of that is difficult, and it adds a day at most to the arrangement. What it does do is prevent the entirely avoidable situation of a well meaning contractor starting work on a Sunday morning and bringing a keyholder and a response unit out to a jeweller's shopfront for nothing.
Recent Acid Etched Graffiti Removal Projects
The Insurer Cares About This Pane
The second thing that makes this street different is why the glass is specified in the first place.
On most commercial frontages the glazing is part of the building. Here it is frequently part of the security arrangement, present at that rating because cover for the stock behind it was conditional on it. The pane is a policy term as much as a building element.
Which raises the question we get asked more here than anywhere else in London: after the work, is the glazing still what the policy requires?
For restoration the answer is yes, and the reasoning is short. The unit is never removed from the frame. Its construction, its interlayer, its thickness and its rating are all exactly what they were, because the only thing that has happened is that a layer far thinner than a human hair has been taken off the outer surface and the clarity polished back. There is no substitution, no refitting and no change of specification.
Replacement is where the exposure sits. A new unit must reproduce the original specification precisely, and a substitution that is nearly right rather than exactly right is the kind of detail that surfaces at the worst possible moment.
Because of that, the useful output of a job here is not only clear glass. It is a written record stating what the pane was, what was done to it, and confirming that the unit was neither removed nor altered, issued alongside the dated photographs so it can go straight to a broker or an underwriter without anyone chasing us for it.
A Trade Street, Not A Shopping Street
Presentation logic works differently here and it is worth naming, because it changes what urgency means.
A great many premises on and around Hatton Garden are trade rather than retail. Buzzer entry, appointment only, workshops on the upper floors, dealers who are known to their customers rather than discovered by them. There is no passing footfall to lose.
So the cost of a damaged window is not walk-in trade. It is what the frontage says to the people who matter: the trade who walk this street daily, the customer arriving for an appointment involving a significant sum, and the insurer or surveyor who visits. A hazy, obviously vandalised pane on a premises holding high value stock reads as a lapse in attention, and in this trade that perception carries weight out of proportion to the physical damage.
It also means the quiet hours are genuinely quiet. This district empties in the evening and at weekends far more completely than the rest of EC1, which gives us a workable window that most central London streets do not offer.
Where We Get Called Out Around Hatton Garden
Hatton Garden itself. The main run of jewellery and diamond premises, with the layered frontages described above and workshops above the shops.
Greville Street and St Cross Street. Dealers, workshops and trade suppliers on the cross streets, quieter and less overlooked once the street has emptied.
Holborn Circus and the southern approach. Larger commercial frontages and the junction traffic, with the heaviest passing exposure at this end.
Clerkenwell Road. The northern boundary, with mixed commercial frontage and considerably more through movement at night than the Garden itself.
Leather Lane. The weekday market alongside fixed premises, where access has to be planned around the stalls rather than through them.
Ely Place. A gated private road with its own access arrangements, which have to be settled before attendance rather than discovered at the gate.
Saffron Hill and the lanes behind. Rear elevations, stair windows and workshop glazing, where damage frequently goes unnoticed for days because nobody is looking at the back of the building.
Replacement Against Restoration On A Specified Pane
| Replacing the unit | Restoring the unit | |
|---|---|---|
| Security rating | Specification must be reproduced exactly | Unchanged, the unit is never removed |
| Bonded alarm sensors | Detached and refitted by the alarm installer | Left undisturbed, work planned around them |
| Grilles and shutters | Usually removed for access | Masked and left in place |
| Applied security film | Stripped and refitted at further cost | Identified first, protected or replaced as agreed |
| Lead time | Weeks for a rated bespoke unit | Usually the same day |
| Stock and display | Window emptied and secured for the fitting | Display arrangements undisturbed |
| Cost | The unit, the fitting, the alarm work, the downtime | Up to 90 per cent less |
The numbers behind that are set out at glass replacement vs protection: the true cost, and the decision itself at should I replace or restore etched graffiti glass.
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Establishing What You Are Looking At
Three kinds of damage present similarly from the pavement and each takes a different route entirely.
Paint or marker sits above the surface. Dense colour, a hard boundary, and a fingernail meets a step where it starts. Solvent removes it and the pane beneath is untouched.
Acid etching occupies the surface. Washed out and cloudy while still passing light, with a faint roughness lying level with the glass around it rather than raised above it. The boundary softens where the gel travelled before somebody cleaned at it. Seen from a lit interior it is markedly more apparent than from outside.
Scratching is mechanical damage. Fine, brilliant, deliberate lines left by a blade, a stone or a key, and a fingernail catches and sits in them.
On a filmed pane there is a fourth possibility worth ruling out, which is that the damage sits on the film rather than the glass. That is established by close inspection and it changes the job completely. A photographic comparison is at glass scratching vs acid etching, with the clouded appearance examined at white frosty window graffiti. On how the method has spread, see the rise of acid-etch vandalism in London.
What To Do Before Anybody Touches It
Any residue on the pane is an active chemical. The gel injures skin and eyes. Nobody handles it, and on a trade frontage that means telling the cleaning contractor before they arrive rather than afterwards.
Keep blades and abrasive pads away. Scraping puts permanent scoring into glass that would otherwise recover fully, and drawing a cloth across wet gel carries the damage onto panes that were unaffected.
Proprietary removers achieve nothing here. There is no paint film for them to dissolve, and on a filmed or coated pane an unknown chemical adds a second problem.
Where residue is visible and it is safe, flush it with cold water in quantity, gloved and with eye protection, letting it run off rather than wiping across the glass.
Photograph it at once, dated, from both faces, and photograph any etched specification mark on the pane. That marking identifies the glass, which determines both the method and the documentation you will need afterwards.
Check whether your alarm registered anything. A bonded sensor may well have recorded activity at the time, and the log is useful to both the police report and the insurer.
Report it as criminal damage and keep the reference. An insurer will want it before engaging. The steps are set out at what to do when your shop window is vandalised.
How The Restoration Is Carried Out
Confirming the assembly. What the pane is, its rating where marked, whether film is applied and to which face, where any bonded sensors sit, and how far the acid has penetrated. On this street that survey governs the whole job.
Alarm coordination. The zone is placed on test for the working window with your monitoring provider, agreed in advance. Nothing starts until that is confirmed.
A trial on a concealed section. The method is proved somewhere out of view before the full pane is committed to.
Masking the assembly. Frames, gaskets, seals, grilles, shutter guides, sensor housings, signage and any film being retained are protected. Slurry is contained and kept off the threshold and the stonework.
Graded abrasion. Successive stages, each finer than the last, lift a depth of glass no eye could measure, and the treated zone is carried well beyond the mark so it fades rather than ending at a line. Work the lettering alone and what remains is a dished patch, a shallow lens ground into the pane, distorting everything behind it. In a display window that distortion is the first thing a customer sees.
Cerium oxide finishing. Remaining haze is taken back under wet cerium oxide, appraised from the side where daylight travels through the pane rather than reflects from it.
Inspection from inside the premises. A display window is looked through as much as it is looked at, so the finish is judged from behind the glass, against the light, before the job is signed off.
A single pane is normally finished within three hours. The removal process is described at acid etched graffiti techniques and removal methods, the finishing at how to polish shopfront glass to optical clarity, and the materials at how to use cerium oxide glass polish.
Where restoration will not work we say so at the outset. Acid that has travelled unusually deep, a sealed unit whose seal had already failed, or a coating lying in the path of the work each mean the pane genuinely needs replacing, and that opinion is given in writing before any expenditure is agreed.
Work Completed In This Part Of London
- Acid etched graffiti removal in Farringdon
- Acid etched graffiti removal on Bond Street
- Graffiti and acid etched graffiti removal in Soho
- Acid etched graffiti removal from glass in Shoreditch
Surfaces We Treat Around Hatton Garden
- Laminated and security rated display glazing, restored without removing the unit.
- Float glass and upper floor windows serving workshops above the shops.
- Toughened glass in entrance doors, interlocks, lobby screens and balustrades.
- Panes carrying applied film, surveyed to establish what sits on which face before work begins.
- Sealed units, treated on the external face with the cavity and its seal left intact.
- Mirrors and mirrored panels in display cabinetry, showrooms and viewing rooms.
- Obscured and manifestation glass on trade entrances, where privacy patterning has to be reproduced rather than removed.
- Glass block in lightwells, stair cores and rear elevations.
- Entrance thresholds and facings in polished granite or polished marble.
- Stainless steel and polished metal on grilles, shutter boxes, entry panels, plaques and door furniture.
The gel attacks any worked surface, and on a secured frontage the grille, the entry panel and the brass plaque are marked as readily as the glass. All of it is dealt with in a single attendance.
Occupiers We Act For
Jewellers, diamond and bullion dealers. Rated display glazing restored without disturbing the unit, with written confirmation for the insurer.
Workshops and setters above the shops. Upper floor and stair glazing, restored outside working hours.
Trade suppliers and appointment only premises. Buzzer entry frontages, worked at whatever hour suits the business.
Landlords and managing agents. Mixed occupancy buildings where the communal entrance and stair glazing sit outside any tenant's demise.
Security installers and facilities contractors. Where glass restoration has to be sequenced alongside alarm or grille work, we coordinate rather than work around you.
Where The Cost Falls
The lease settles it on a normal commercial letting. The repairing covenant establishes whether the display frontage falls inside your demise, which on Hatton Garden it generally does, while the communal entrance, the stair glazing serving the workshops above and the elevation itself normally belong to the landlord and are recovered through the service charge. On a building subdivided between several trade occupiers that boundary is worth checking on the demise plan rather than assumed.
On insurance the arithmetic is the usual one with a twist. Weigh our figure against the excess before notifying anybody, because a single restored pane will often fall beneath it and a claim producing nothing still registers at renewal. The twist is that for a premises whose cover depends on the glazing specification, the written confirmation that the unit was not removed or altered may matter to the broker more than the claim ever would.
Preventing A Repeat
Restoring the pane deals with the damage that exists. It discourages nobody, and a frontage that has been marked once on a street like this tends to be found again.
A sacrificial film bonded to the outer face is built to be ruined instead of the glass, and is stripped and renewed quickly at a small share of restoring the pane a second time. On rated glazing there is a further step: the film specification has to be checked against the existing security arrangement and against any bonded sensors rather than simply applied, and that is a short conversation with your installer worth having before anything is fitted.
The subject is covered fully at anti-acid etched graffiti protection, including the principle behind it, how long it remains serviceable, what fitting costs and its effect on the appearance of the glass. For premises whose window doubles as a display cabinet, there is more at protecting retail displays from glass vandalism.
Districts Adjoining Hatton Garden
The service in full, with our process video and the complete question set, is on the main acid etched graffiti removal page.
Hatton Garden Acid Etched Graffiti Removal: Frequently Asked Questions
Our display glass is alarmed. Can it be worked on at all?
Yes, with the alarm arranged first. Restoration produces sustained vibration and exactly the acoustic signature a glass mounted sensor exists to detect, so the zone goes on test with your monitoring provider for the working window. Tell us the frontage is alarmed when you call and we will build that into the arrangement.
Will you remove the sensors from the glass?
No. Detaching and refitting a bonded sensor is your alarm installer's work. If one sits inside the area we need to treat, that is resolved with them before the day rather than improvised on site.
Does restoration affect our insurance specification?
It should not, because the unit never leaves the frame. Construction, interlayer, thickness and rating are all exactly as they were, since only a layer thinner than a hair has been taken off the outer surface. We issue written confirmation of that, with the dated photographs, so it can go to your broker.
What about the grille and the shutter?
They stay in place. We mask the grille, the shutter box and the guides and work on the pane behind them. Replacement is where they become a problem, because a fitter normally needs them removed first.
How do we know whether the damage is on the film or the glass?
Close inspection, which is part of the survey. From a few feet they look identical. If it is on the film, the pane beneath is untouched and the answer is a film replacement rather than a restoration, which is a different and usually cheaper job.
We are appointment only with no walk-in trade. Is it worth dealing with quickly?
The audience is different rather than absent. The trade walks this street daily, clients arrive for appointments involving significant sums, and surveyors and insurers visit. On premises holding high value stock a visibly vandalised frontage reads as a lapse in attention, and that perception carries weight here.
When can you work?
This district empties in the evening and at weekends more completely than most of EC1, so the quiet windows are genuinely quiet. We work to whatever hour suits the premises and the alarm arrangement.
Our premises is on Ely Place. Does the gate cause a problem?
Not if it is settled beforehand. Access arrangements there are particular, and we confirm them in advance rather than arriving and discovering them.
Do we need to empty the window or close?
Neither. The pane stays in the frame throughout, so display arrangements are undisturbed and there is no reason to stop trading. Fitting a replacement would require the window cleared and secured.
Will the treated area be visible afterwards?
It should not be. The work is carried well past the mark and faded out so no boundary remains. The failure to avoid is polishing the tag alone, which leaves a shallow lens in the pane that distorts everything behind it, and in a display window that is immediately obvious.
There is scratching as well as etching.
One attendance covers both, since the graded abrasion and polish that lifts an etch also takes back a scratch. What limits us is depth, and now and then an incision has gone too far to polish out.
What about the entry panel and the brass plaque?
The same gel damages any polished metal, so entry panels, plaques, grilles and door furniture are all affected and all recoverable, and they are dealt with alongside the glass.
What does it cost?
Set against replacing a rated unit, counting the glass, the fitting, the alarm work and the downtime, restoration comes in up to 90 per cent below. What sets our price is how much of the pane is affected, how far the acid went, what the unit is specified as, how we reach it, and whether film is fitted afterwards. You have it in writing before we begin. No lazy contractors. No hidden fees.
Should we notify insurers?
Hold our figure against the excess before anyone calls a broker. Restoring one pane commonly costs less than the excess itself, so notifying buys you nothing while still appearing on the record at renewal. Once several panes or the whole frontage are involved, claiming becomes worthwhile.
The damage is months old. Is it still treatable?
Almost always. What age does is lengthen the job, because dirt and weathering work down into the pitting and there is simply more to remove before the clarity returns. The outcome is the same.
How should we start?
Send photographs from outside and inside, photograph any etched specification mark on the pane, and tell us whether the frontage is alarmed and who monitors it. Between them those three things let us identify the glass, price the work and arrange the alarm before we attend.
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
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