Old Street runs on glass. Walk from the roundabout down towards Great Eastern Street and almost every ground floor you pass is a full height glazed frontage, a reception screen or a curtain walled elevation. It is the most transparent commercial district in London, and that is precisely why acid etched graffiti causes so much trouble here.
If a tag has appeared on your building's glazing overnight, it is milky and semi-transparent, and your cleaning contractor has already told you it will not come off, you are dealing with acid etching. It is not paint sitting on the surface. It is damage to the glass itself, and no cleaning product will touch it.
We restore it in situ, usually the same day, for a fraction of what replacing the unit costs. No boarding, no scaffolding for a glazier, no waiting weeks for a bespoke pane while your reception looks abandoned.
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 Old Street Is A Target
The area sits on the boundary between Islington and Hackney, at the point where the City fringe meets Shoreditch. That position creates a very specific problem.
Corporate glazing meets a late night economy. The offices around the roundabout, along Epworth Street, Tabernacle Street and Leonard Street, and across to City Road hold serious commercial tenants behind enormous areas of glass. Two hundred metres away, Great Eastern Street and the Shoreditch end run late into the night. The buildings are corporate. The foot traffic passing them at two in the morning is not.
Empty at night and at weekends. A shopfront has staff in it fourteen hours a day. An office building at Old Street is deserted from Friday evening until Monday morning, often with nothing but a reception desk and a camera between the street and a hundred square metres of glazing. Damage done on a Friday night is frequently not reported until Monday, by which point any residual etching paste has had a whole weekend to work.
The glass is the building. On a period shopfront, a damaged pane is a damaged pane. On a curtain walled elevation, the glazing is the facade. Etching across a reception screen or a ground floor elevation is not a cosmetic annoyance, it is a visible failure of building management that every tenant, visitor and prospective occupier walks past.
Redevelopment and hoarding. The area has been under near continuous construction for years. Hoarding lines, temporary screens and part occupied buildings all create the quiet, unobserved frontages where this kind of vandalism happens.
Recent Acid Etched Graffiti Removal Projects
Where We Get Called Out Around Old Street
The roundabout and station approaches. The redesigned Old Street junction concentrates enormous pedestrian flow into a small area, and the glazed frontages facing it take the most exposure of anything in EC1.
Old Street Yard, Epworth Street and Tabernacle Street. Modern office estate with ground floor glazing, reception screens and glazed entrance lobbies, plus the coffee and food units serving them.
City Road, north and south of the junction. A long run of mixed office, residential and ground floor retail with a steady pattern of damage, particularly on the quieter stretches towards Moorfields and Islington.
Leonard Street, Paul Street and Clifton Street. Converted warehouse offices and creative studios, usually with large single pane glazing fitted into older openings.
Great Eastern Street and the Shoreditch approach. The transition zone between the corporate estate and the night economy, and reliably the worst affected stretch.
Bunhill Row, Chiswell Street and towards St Luke's. Quieter, more residential in places, with office and institutional glazing that sits unobserved at weekends.
The Problem Nobody Tells You About: Coated Glass
This is the single most important technical point on this page, and it applies to almost every building constructed or refurbished around Old Street in the last twenty years.
Modern commercial glazing is rarely plain glass. Low emissivity glass, solar control glass and anti-reflective glass all carry a microscopically thin functional coating, and on many units that coating is on a surface that faces outward or sits within the cavity. Tinted and body-coloured glass behaves differently again.
Restoration works by removing a controlled, microscopically thin layer from the surface of the glass. If that surface carries a coating, polishing through it does not restore the pane. It destroys the coating, leaving a patch with different reflectivity, different colour and different thermal performance from the glass around it. In bright light it is far more obvious than the etching was. It can also affect the unit's performance characteristics, which matters if the building has warranties or an energy performance certificate that assumed those characteristics.
So the first thing we do at Old Street is not clean anything. It is establish exactly what the glass is. Where the etching sits relative to a coating determines whether the pane can be restored, restored with limits, or genuinely does need replacing. A contractor who arrives and starts polishing without asking that question is gambling with your facade.
We tell you which of the three situations you are in before any work starts, in writing. If it is genuinely a replacement, we say so and you have lost nothing but an assessment.
Restore Or Replace? The Numbers For A Commercial Elevation
| Replacing the glass | Restoring the glass | |
|---|---|---|
| Lead time | Weeks for a bespoke or coated unit | Same day in most cases |
| Access | Glazing crew, lift or scaffold | Worked in situ from ground or low level access |
| Reception and lobby downtime | Boarded or screened while you wait | Operating as normal |
| Matching the existing elevation | New unit may not match adjacent weathered glass | Original pane retained, nothing to match |
| Warranty and performance | Sealed unit and facade warranties may be affected | Unaffected where no coating is involved |
| Waste and disposal | Old unit removed and disposed of | None |
| Typical cost | Full replacement cost of the unit | Up to 90 per cent less |
On a large curtain walled elevation the replacement cost is rarely just the glass. It is the survey, the bespoke manufacture, the access equipment, the crew, the disposal and the period during which your building looks like it is being repaired. The full comparison is in glass replacement vs protection: the true cost, and the decision itself in should I replace or restore etched graffiti glass.
Is It Etching, Scratching Or Paint?
Three kinds of damage look similar from across the pavement and need entirely different treatment.
Paint or marker. Run a fingernail across it. If the mark stands proud of the glass it is sitting on the surface. Coloured, opaque, sharp edged. Ordinary graffiti, removed with the correct solvent.
Acid etching. White, grey or milky, semi-transparent, daylight visible through it. Slightly rough or chalky to a fingernail but level with the surface. Edges often soft or feathered. Much more visible from inside a lit reception looking out, which is why it is usually the front of house team who report it first.
Scratching. Sharp, bright, linear cuts from a blade or a key. A fingernail catches in the groove.
All three turn up on the same elevation regularly. Our photographic comparison is in the glass scratching vs acid etching identification guide, and the frosted appearance specifically in white frosty window graffiti.
Reported On Monday Morning? What To Do First
Weekend damage found by a building manager on Monday needs a slightly different response from a shopkeeper finding it at opening.
Treat visible residue as a live chemical. Etching paste that has not been rinsed is still corrosive to skin and eyes, and after a weekend it may still be present. Do not let cleaning staff or contractors handle it unprotected.
Do not let anyone blade it or scrub it. Blades add scratches to a pane that already needs restoring, and scrubbing spreads residue across clean glass, enlarging the damaged area. This is the most common way a small job becomes a large one.
Do not apply solvents or graffiti removers. They do nothing to etching, and on coated glass an unknown product is an additional risk.
Rinse with plenty of cold water where residue is visible and it is safe to do so, with gloves and eye protection, flooding rather than wiping.
Photograph it before anything else, from inside and outside, dated. That is what your insurer, your landlord or your service charge auditor will want, and it lets us quote accurately without a wasted visit.
Report it to the police. Criminal damage is reportable and a crime reference number is normally required for a claim. Our full guidance is in what to do when your shop window is vandalised.
How We Restore Etched Glass At Old Street
Glass identification. Float, toughened, laminated, coated, tinted or a sealed double glazed unit, and which surface the coating sits on. On a commercial elevation this is the step that decides everything.
Depth reading and test area. We establish how deep the etch has gone and work a small discreet area first, checking the result before committing to the full pane. On a repeating elevation we will usually test on the least visible bay.
Containment and protection. Frames, gaskets, seals, manifestation, applied film and signage are masked and protected. Slurry is contained rather than run down a facade or across a pedestrian route.
Staged abrasion. Progressively finer abrasive stages remove a microscopically thin layer across an area feathered wide enough that no transition is visible. Polishing only the tag leaves a dished, lensed patch that distorts everything seen through it, and on a flat modern elevation that distortion is glaringly obvious. This is where most general contractors fail.
Cerium oxide polishing. Optical clarity restored with cerium oxide, worked wet and checked against transmitted light rather than reflected light.
Inspection from both sides and at angle. Checked from the street and from inside the reception, in daylight and at an oblique angle, because that is how tenants and visitors see it.
Most single pane jobs finish in under three hours. Technical detail is documented in acid etched graffiti techniques and removal methods and how to polish shopfront glass to optical clarity.
Working With Building And Facilities Teams
Most of our Old Street work is instructed by facilities managers, building managers and managing agents rather than by the occupier, and we work the way that estate expects.
Out of hours by default. Early mornings, evenings and weekends so the work is finished before your tenants arrive. A reception under restoration during business hours is not a good look for a building marketing itself on presentation.
Paperwork before attendance. Method statements and risk assessments provided in advance, our technicians inducted, and permits to work completed to your building's requirements rather than ours.
Access planning. Ground and low level glazing is straightforward. Atria, internal partitions, glazed walkways and anything above ground floor is planned with the right equipment and the right permissions before we turn up.
Evidence you can file. Dated before and after photography and a written description of works, in a form you can put straight into a service charge record, an insurance claim or a client report without chasing us for it.
One contact across a portfolio. If you manage several buildings across EC1, EC2 and N1, you get one point of contact, consistent reporting and consolidated invoicing.
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 Old Street
- Laminated shopfront and lobby glazing, including large format units.
- Toughened glass, including entrance screens, doors and balustrades.
- Float glass and standard windows in converted warehouse offices.
- Curtain walling, spandrel panels and glazed elevations at ground and low level.
- Double glazed and sealed units, treated externally without breaking the seal.
- Internal partitions, meeting room glazing and atrium screens.
- Frosted, etched and manifestation glass, where the existing finish has to be matched rather than polished away.
- Mirrors and mirrored panels in lifts, washrooms and reception areas.
- Polished stone entrance surrounds and cladding, including polished granite and polished marble.
- Stainless steel entrance frames, door furniture and lift doors.
Where a frontage has been worked along and the damage crosses glass, stone and metal, we handle all of it in one visit instead of sending you to three contractors.
Who We Work For Around The Roundabout
Office and technology occupiers. Reception glazing and ground floor elevations restored outside core hours, so your staff and visitors arrive to finished work.
Managing agents and landlords. Reactive response across multi let buildings, with the reporting that makes recharging straightforward.
Ground floor retail, coffee and food units. The businesses under the office blocks, working to their own trading hours rather than the building's.
Co-working and serviced office operators. Presentation is the product. Etched glass in a reception undermines a tour before anyone has said a word.
Developers and contractors. Newly glazed elevations damaged before practical completion or during a part occupied phase, restored rather than re-ordered.
Who Pays? Leases, Insurance And Service Charges
On a multi let building the answer usually sits in the lease. Glazing to a demised unit is typically the tenant's repairing obligation, while glazing to common parts, the entrance lobby and the elevation is generally the landlord's, recovered through the service charge. Check the repairing covenant and the definition of the demise before assuming, because on a curtain walled building the boundary between demise and structure is not always where people expect.
Malicious damage is covered by many commercial policies, but excesses vary and a restoration cost is often close to or below the excess, which is why a number of our clients absorb it rather than register a claim. That is a far easier decision with a firm written quote in hand. Whoever pays, every job comes with dated before and after photography and a written description of works suitable for a claim, a service charge record or a client report.
Stopping It Happening Again
Restoration puts your glass back. On an elevation that has been hit once, at a location as exposed as Old Street, it is worth assuming it will be hit again. Taggers return to what worked.
Sacrificial anti-graffiti film on the outer face means the next attack damages the film rather than the glass, and the film is peeled and replaced in minutes at a fraction of the cost of another restoration. It is optically clear and it is routinely specified on commercial elevations for exactly this reason. Detail is on our anti-acid etched graffiti protection page, with how the film works, how long it lasts, what it costs and whether it affects visibility. For office estate specifically, see corporate office glass protection in London.
Recent Work Nearby
- Acid etched graffiti removal from glass in Shoreditch
- Acid etched graffiti removal in Farringdon
- Emergency acid etched graffiti removal in Dalston
- Acid etched graffiti removal in Hackney
Areas We Cover Next To Old Street
For the full picture on the service, including our process video and the complete FAQ, see our main acid etched graffiti removal page.
Old Street Acid Etched Graffiti Removal: Frequently Asked Questions
Can acid etched graffiti be removed from a commercial elevation, or do we need new units?
In the large majority of cases it can be removed. The etch sits in a microscopically thin layer at the surface and restoration removes that layer and polishes the pane back to optical clarity. Replacement is only necessary where the etching is unusually deep, the unit is otherwise damaged, or a surface coating is involved. We tell you which before any work starts.
Our glazing is coated. Can you still treat it?
Sometimes, and it depends entirely on which surface the coating is on and where the etching sits relative to it. Polishing through a low emissivity or solar control coating destroys it and leaves a patch with different reflectivity and performance from the glass around it. We identify the glass first and give you a straight answer, including when the honest answer is that the unit needs replacing.
Will restoration affect our sealed unit or facade warranties?
Restoration on the external face of a sealed unit does not break the seal or disturb the cavity. Where a coating or a specific performance specification is involved we will flag it before proceeding so you can check the position with your facade contractor or warranty provider.
Can you work outside business hours?
Yes, and on this estate we usually do. Early mornings, evenings and weekends are standard for us so tenants arrive to completed work rather than a work site.
Do you provide RAMS and work to our permit system?
Yes. Method statements and risk assessments are provided in advance, our technicians complete your induction, and we work to your building's permit to work requirements. All of our technicians are fully trained, certified and insured.
How quickly can you attend?
We offer same day response across EC1, EC2 and N1. Damage discovered on a Monday morning after a weekend can usually be dealt with that day.
How long does a single pane take?
Most single pane jobs are finished in under three hours. Repeating bays across a larger elevation are quoted on the number of panes and the access required.
Will the restored area be visible against the rest of the elevation?
Not when it is done properly. The removal is feathered across an area much wider than the graffiti so there is no visible edge. On a flat modern elevation a badly executed repair leaves a dished patch that distorts reflections, which is why we check from inside, from the street and at an oblique angle before signing off.
Can you reach glazing above ground floor level?
Yes, with the appropriate access equipment and permissions agreed in advance. Atria, walkways and internal partitions are all within scope. Access is planned before attendance rather than improvised on the day.
What about manifestation and applied film on our partitions?
Applied manifestation and film are protected during the work or replaced afterwards. Where the glass itself carries an etched or frosted decorative finish, the original finish has to be matched rather than polished away, and we assess those individually.
Someone has scratched the glass as well. Can you do both?
Yes, and they usually arrive together. Both are treated with the same staged abrasion and polishing process. Depth decides what is achievable, and very deep gouges are occasionally beyond restoration.
What does it cost?
Restoration typically saves up to 90 per cent against replacing the same unit, once you account for bespoke manufacture, access, labour, disposal and the period the elevation spends looking damaged. Price depends on the affected area, the depth, 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.
Is this recoverable through the service charge?
Where the glazing forms part of the common parts or the building elevation it usually is, subject to the lease. We provide dated photographic evidence and a written description of works in a form suitable for service charge records and audit.
The damage has been there for months. Is it too late?
Almost never. Fresh etching is faster and cheaper to restore than damage that has weathered, but old damage is nearly always recoverable. It simply takes longer.
Can you cover several buildings for us?
Yes. We work with facilities teams and managing agents across multi site portfolios with one point of contact, consistent reporting and consolidated invoicing.
What happens when we call?
We ask what the damage looks like, what the glass is and where the building is. A photograph is usually enough for us to tell you whether it is etching, scratching or paint and give an indication of cost. We then attend, identify the glass, 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
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