Crawley Etched Glass

Leadbitter Glass was first established in 1994 and has proudly produced Etched Glass and Victorian Etched Glass panels for homes in Crawley ever since. Etched Glass, while one of the earliest forms of decorative glass, is often used today to produce elegant contemporary designs. Etched Glass panels are a popular choice for homes in the area along with upscale commercial buildings. Almost all panels our glass studio produces qualify for free delivery to homes in Crawley.

We also produce Stained Glass, Bevelled Glass and Fused Glass to clients in Crawley.

After placing your order with us, you’ll receive our free design service – known as the Client Pages Service. This is where we produce a Computer Generated Proof for you a few days after ordering. The proof shows what your chosen design will look like in your custom glass sizes. This gives you the opportunity to request changes to the design before the panel is produced, ensuring you get exactly what you want. You may for example decide that you want to alter a decorative border, add some extra flower petals or increase the size of a house number. We’ll make these amendments until you are 100% happy with the final design and you give our glass artists the thumbs up to begin production.

Your numbers up!

House names and numbers look great when etched for door glass or fanlights. Many homes in the Crawley area have top lights (transom lights) above their doors, the ideal place to display your elegant etched house name or number. These panels are some of the most popular requests we receive, our glass artists produce hundreds of them every year! If you have a transom window above your door, we can create a stunning etched glass panel displaying your house name or number using any font and decorative border you choose. We can also create etched door glass to match the fanlights if required.

Browse Our Etched Glass Galleries

Almost any pattern can be produced by our expert glass artists in etched glass. If you’re struggling to find the right design for your home, head over to our extensive Etched Glass Gallery for some inspiration. Within the gallery, there are categories such as Traditional, The Edinburgh Range and Repeat Backgrounds, Modern, Victorian and many others. We also have thousands of stunning designs in all forms of decorative glass across our various galleries which may be of interest to you.

How is Etched Glass made?

We never use ‘stickers’ on our etched glass panels. We produce etched glass by sandblasting the glass so the etching is permanent and of the highest quality. Some companies will say they offer “Etched Glass” when this is not actually the case. They simply place a vinyl sticker onto the glass, so no ‘etching’ has taken place. Not only does this result in a poor pretend ‘etched effect’, but the stickers can turn yellow and even start to shrink after being exposed to sunlight for a few years. Companies sometimes say their etched glass is ‘screen printed’, but this also suffers from the same discolouration issue over time. You should always make sure you are paying for a ‘sandblasted‘ etched glass product for quality that lasts. You can see the problems encountered with fake etched glass here.

Our process

First, we cut a temporary mask to shape and overlay it onto one side of the panel. This ensures the areas we want to remain clear don’t get etched. We then place the masked panel inside a specialist sandblasting booth while coarse grit/sand is fired at high speed across the panel. Once the etching process is complete, the temporary mask is removed and the areas that were unprotected have now been etched. If the glass is single glazed, we then apply a protective sandblast coating to the etched side to prevent unwanted grease smudges. If the glass is to be double glazed, the coating doesn’t need to be applied because the etched side will be protected within the unit.

Etched glass supplied to any home throughout the Crawley area:

Horsham – East Grinstead – Burgess Hill – Haywards Heath – Redhill – Reigate – Dorking – Horley – Leatherhead – Epsom – Guildford – Woking – Farnham – Aldershot – Farnborough – Camberley – Weybridge – Walton-on-Thames – Esher – Ewell – Leatherhead