Los Angeles County · Central LA · 285 ft
Sonlight cleans windows across Los Angeles: Downtown, Hollywood, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Mid-City, Hancock Park, Koreatown, Echo Park and the neighbourhoods between them. We opened our Southern California operation in 2026 after 48 years on Colorado's Front Range, and we brought a firm price before we knock and crews who know that this city drinks two different waters.
Los Angeles is not one glass environment, it is several stacked on top of each other, and the most useful thing anybody can tell a homeowner here is about the water. LADWP sells two supplies. Most of the city drinks Los Angeles Aqueduct water, Eastern Sierra snowmelt piped down from the Owens Valley, which in recent reporting averaged around 112 milligrams per litre, roughly 6.5 grains per gallon. The Harbor and Eastern zones run on purchased Metropolitan supply, which averaged around 270 to 272 milligrams per litre, close to sixteen grains, and is very hard by any standard. Same utility, same city, two and a half times the mineral load depending on your pressure zone. It is why a neighbour's advice about spotting is not reliable here and why we test the deposit on your glass before quoting restoration.
The second Los Angeles variable is the freeway network. Homes and storefronts within a few blocks of the 10, the 101, the 110 or the 5 carry a deposit that is not dust: tire wear, brake particulate and diesel soot come off the roadway as fine carbon bound in oil. Oil-bound carbon smears under a dry cloth, resists a plain rinse, and household glass cleaner moves it around the pane rather than lifting it. It loads unevenly too, so the corridor-facing elevation can look wrong two weeks after a full clean while the sheltered side still looks fine. That elevation needs a degreasing pass and, honestly, a shorter interval than the rest of the building.
Third is the building stock, which is the widest range in the region. Within a few miles you have 1920s Spanish Colonial Revival with steel casements and ninety-year-old putty glazing, Craftsman bungalows with original wood sash, mid-century post-and-beam houses with single-pane window walls, brick warehouse conversions downtown, and towers where nothing above the third floor can be reached from the ground. Those are five different jobs, and the equipment appropriate to one will damage another. This is a city where asking how a company plans to clean your specific windows is a reasonable question.
The fourth is the calendar. Downtown Los Angeles averages 14.25 inches of rain a year and takes nearly all of it between December and March, February being the wettest month at about 3.8 inches. Seven months pass with nothing rinsing anything. That is why the highest-value appointment of the year here is late October, before the first storm turns a dry season of accumulation into streaks running down every pane, and it is why cleaning advice written for a summer-rain climate is wrong here in a way that compounds.
Four variables decide what is on a window in Southern California and what it takes to get it off: which water you drink, how much ocean you get, where the wind comes from, and how long it goes without raining. Here is where Los Angeles sits on each.
Southern California does not run on the four seasons that window cleaning advice usually assumes. Los Angeles follows the Central LA calendar, which is the actual year in the order it happens and what each phase does to your glass.
What it does to glass
Downtown Los Angeles averages 14.25 inches a year and takes nearly all of it here, February being the wettest month at about 3.8 inches. The first storm mobilises seven months of oily road film and dust and runs it down the pane in streaks. On period buildings it also finds every failed putty joint and every blocked scupper.
What we do about it
We push for a late-October clean so the first rain lands on clean glass. On older buildings we photograph any glazing or drainage failure we find rather than working past it, because that is the leak you want to know about in November and not in February.
What it does to glass
Seven months with no rinse at all. Corridor film, construction dust and pollen accumulate continuously. In the hills, decomposed granite and chaparral litter add to it, and the west-facing glass takes hard afternoon UV that bakes whatever is on it into place.
What we do about it
Three visits a year for anything within a few blocks of a freeway, twice for sheltered residential streets. We clean west and south elevations later in the day where possible, because chemistry flashing off hot glass is what leaves residue.
What it does to glass
Honeydew rains from blooming jacaranda across Hancock Park, Windsor Square, Mid-City and much of the Eastside. It is aphid excretion, not sap. Fresh it rinses with water; baked onto hot glass it hardens and then grows black sooty mold on the sugar.
What we do about it
Early July, after the drop finishes, is the appointment that holds. Cleaning a jacaranda block in mid-May is money spent on a result that lasts about a week, and we would rather say so.
What it does to glass
Offshore wind funnels through Cahuenga, Laurel and the Hollywood canyons. In the hills it drives grit into tracks and abrades screen mesh; in the flats it lifts street dust onto everything and coats the inland-facing elevation hardest.
What we do about it
Tracks come out dry before any water goes on. In the hills we check screens as they come off, because wind-abraded mesh usually looks fine from inside until it is handled.
What it does to glass
In the hills and the wildland interface, some years bring smoke residue rather than dust: fine carbon, alkaline ash and condensed tars. It smears under a dry cloth, the ash fraction can etch if left wet, and the carbon is abrasive.
What we do about it
A flooded neutral-pH pass to carry the alkaline fraction off first, then a solvent step for the tar, then the wash. It is priced as a different job because it is one, and we tell you honestly where a pane has already been etched.
The full regional guide, including what makes Central LA different from the rest of the metro, is on our Central Los Angeles and the Hollywood Hills page.
This is the single most confusing thing about mineral spotting in Los Angeles. Your neighbour three miles away may be on a supply with two and a half times your mineral load, or half of it. That is why online advice, and even a good contractor's experience in another part of town, is unreliable here. We test the actual deposit on your actual glass before quoting restoration, because guessing from the city name gets it wrong often enough to matter.
Carbon suspended in oil does not behave like dust. Washed with detergent it moves around the pane and comes back within days, and homeowners near the corridors conclude their glass is permanently hazed. It is not. It needs a degreasing pass with dwell time before the wash, and the corridor-facing elevation genuinely needs a shorter cycle than the rest of the building. We will tell you which elevation that is rather than pricing the whole property at the worst one.
Period-revival Los Angeles is full of steel casement windows with divided lights, and those frames rust from inside the rabbet outward while the putty holding each small light is now around ninety years old and held together substantially by paint. A pole system or an aggressive squeegee pass pops putty and loosens glass. They need hand cleaning with water kept off the frame, and any glazing failure photographed rather than worked past. A casement caught early can be reglazed; one left another decade usually cannot.
Downtown, Koreatown, Hollywood and the Wilshire corridor are full of buildings where nothing above the third floor is reachable from the ground. Above that line the work becomes rope descent or suspended platform under OSHA rules, with anchor inspection and rescue planning attached. When bids on a tower vary wildly the difference is usually not price, it is which floors each bidder actually intended to clean.
Pricing is per property: square footage, window count, stories and access. Here is a real Los Angeles example:
Example: Two-storey 2,600 sqft Mid-City home, roughly 28 windows including original wood sash and a stair window
Interior only
$400
Exterior only
$445
Both (most popular)
$740
Mineral restoration for irrigation etching is quoted separately. It is a different job than washing, and pretending otherwise is how customers end up paying twice. Get an exact price for your Los Angeles address in 30 seconds.
Tower and warehouse-conversion glass. Above the third floor this is rope-access work, and the industrial steel frames need hand cleaning.
Period-revival estates with divided lights, art glass and jacaranda-lined streets. Hand work and early-July timing.
Dense mixed stock from 1920s courtyards to new mid-rise, with heavy corridor film along the boulevards.
Spanish Revival and mid-century on hillside lots. Access is the constraint and the tracks fill with canopy litter.
Steep streets, mid-century modern and stilt houses where the primary glass has nothing level beneath it.
The densest mid-rise residential in the city. Balcony rail and upper-floor exterior glass are the whole conversation.
Craftsman and period stock with original wood sash, plus real corridor film from the 10.
Craftsman bungalows with original sash and hillside lots, and Metropolitan-supplied water on the eastern side.
Art deco and mid-rise along Wilshire with storefront glass that needs a materially shorter interval than residential.
Full coastal salt exposure, contemporary glass boxes, canal-side properties and glass rail with no eave over it.
ZIP codes served: 90004, 90005, 90006, 90010, 90012, 90013, 90014, 90015, 90017, 90019, 90020, 90026, 90027, 90028, 90029, 90031, 90032, 90033, 90036, 90038, 90039, 90041, 90042, 90057, 90065, 90071
Interior and exterior glass, screens off the frame and hand-washed, and tracks cleared dry before any water touches the window.
The service this metro actually needs most. Most of Greater LA drinks 12 to 18 grain water, and irrigation overspray does more permanent damage to glass here than anything airborne.
Title 24 has put an array on nearly every home built since 2020, and seven rainless months mean nothing washes them. Measured California soiling is around 7 percent across a dry summer.
Near the coast salt pits the frame and hardens the spline years before the mesh looks worn. Inland, Santa Ana grit abrades it. Rescreening is routine here, not an upsell.
Low-pressure washing for stucco. Pressure drives water into a stucco wall assembly where it has nowhere to go, and the damage shows up months later.
Driveways, walks and hardscape, with a degreasing step where corridor oil is in the concrete. We keep pressure off stucco entirely.
Cement, stucco and gypsum fines cure onto new glass and are harder than it is. Dry-wiping them scratches permanently. This needs a dedicated flooded pass.
Only where your roof actually has gutters. Barrel tile here frequently carries partial runs, and low-slope roofs drain through scuppers instead. We check before quoting.
It depends on your pressure zone, and this surprises almost everyone. LADWP's Los Angeles Aqueduct supply, which reaches most of the city, has run around 112 milligrams per litre, roughly 6.5 grains per gallon. The Harbor and Eastern zones run on purchased Metropolitan supply that has averaged around 270 to 272 milligrams per litre, close to sixteen grains. That is a genuine two-and-a-half-fold difference in what dries onto your glass, and it is worth knowing before you buy mineral restoration.
Twice a year for most homes and three times within a few blocks of a freeway. The two appointments that do the most work are late October, before the first storms mobilise seven months of accumulation down the glass, and March, once Santa Ana season closes out. There is effectively no rain between May and November here, so nothing is being cleaned for you in between.
Because the deposit is oily rather than dusty and was washed rather than degreased. Freeway carbon comes bound in oil, and detergent spreads it. It needs a degreasing pass first. The elevation facing the corridor also loads several times faster than the sheltered side, which is why one side of a house can look wrong while the rest still looks fine.
Yes, including rope descent and bosun chair work. Above roughly the third floor this is a licensed, OSHA-governed discipline with anchor inspection and rescue planning attached, and most companies quoting window cleaning in this market cannot legally go above pole reach. If you have bids that vary wildly on the same building, ask each one which floors they are actually quoting.
Yes, by hand. Both assemblies are usually held together by putty that failed decades ago and paint that has been holding it since, and steel casements also rust from inside the rabbet. We keep water off the frame, work pane by pane on divided lights, and photograph any failed glazing rather than working past it, because that is the leak you want to know about in November rather than February.
See the full Greater Los Angeles service area and Southern California window care guide.
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