Lakewood starts innovative wall painting

Published on June 01, 2023

Like many cities in L.A. County, Lakewood has seen a recent uptick in graffiti, often on walls along major streets in the city. Lakewood has always had a policy of painting over graffiti as quickly as possible. However, over time this can lead to a patchwork quilt of different colors of paint along long sections of walls along streets.

With a goal of beautification and reducing graffiti, the City of Lakewood has started a new program of repainting long stretches of walls along major streets in a single color to remove the patchwork quilt look.

The paint for each street will be selected from one of four colors selected by the city based on the most common block colors throughout Lakewood. The color for the street walls will match the predominant block color for that street segment. So far the new effort also seems to be deterring the retagging of those walls with new graffiti.

Public Works crews from Lakewood are carrying out the new program and have started with walls on the eastern side of town.

The crews work in teams of at least two, with support from public safety personnel if warranted. If new graffiti occurs, city crews will now consistently have the same color of paint to quickly cover up the graffiti and match the existing color of the wall.