One of the frustrations of owning your own business is dealing with the mess left by graffiti and tagging. It drags down the appearance of the neighborhood and damages your property and your professional reputation. A commercial painting service can help provide you with graffiti maintenance — especially important if you are doing business in a location with a high level of graffiti.
What can you do to prevent graffiti and tagging in the first place?
- Make your walls and surfaces less appealing to taggers. Dark colored walls that have a rough texture and are freshly painted with anti-graffiti paint are less likely to be tagged.
- You can also discourage graffiti by making it more difficult for vandals to reach your walls. Planting ivy so that it hangs along the walls or bushes close to the walls makes them less of an easy target. Discourage people from loitering by removing benches and fence off your property.
- Taggers prefer to do their work in private. Use motion-detecting lights to catch vandals in the act. Don’t leave lights on all night, however. This just provides illumination for the taggers to see what they are doing. Sudden brightness in an area that was previously dark is much more likely to catch people’s attention.
- Cover your walls with murals. Many graffiti vandals consider themselves artists and are less likely to mess up a wall that has already been covered with art. Keep in mind that if you still get tagged, it might be difficult to clean the graffiti without accidentally removing the artwork.
If you have already been tagged, it’s important to clean up the mess. In addition to hiring a Commercial Painting Contractor, here are a few things you can do:
- If you’ve been tagged, contact the local police department. They may want to take pictures to try to catch the vandal. If the police don’t come out, take a picture yourself for your own records.
- Graffiti can usually be removed with a sandblaster or power washer.
- Clean graffiti quickly. If the vandal knows that their work of the previous night will be gone before business hours the next day, they are less likely to hit your business again.
- Be prepared to touch up paint and sealant damaged by the graffiti removal.
Forming an anti-graffiti association with neighboring business and helping each other clean can lower graffiti rates in your area.