How to Clean the Outside of Your Apartment Windows in NYC

In most New York apartments the outside of the glass is cleaned from inside. Double-hung windows put in since the 1980s usually tilt in, and once the sash tilts, the outside face is a foot from your hands. When a window won’t tilt, the reason is usually a seized latch or a dead balance, not the window type. Only if it truly doesn’t tilt do you need someone outside the building, and then your floor decides who that can be.

Never lean out or sit on the sill to reach the glass.

The 30-second tilt test

1. Unlock the window and raise the bottom sash about a hand’s width.
2. Look at the top edge of that sash, near each corner. You’re looking for two small tabs or levers. They’re often painted the same color as the frame.
3. Slide both tabs toward the center at the same time. Light finger pressure should move them.
4. Tilt the top of the sash toward you, holding it with both hands.

If it resists, stop. A latch painted shut for fifteen years will sometimes give if you lean on it, and what gives with it is the balance that holds the sash up. You end up with a sash that won’t stay open or a window that won’t close in December. One resident described exactly that on Reddit: after a cleaning, the tracks needed fixing because the window would no longer stay closed.

How the sash behaved tells you which of three situations you’re in.

It tilted in freely. Go to the next section. Most double-hungs also let the upper sash slide down and tilt, the half people forget about.

It moved stiffly, or the tabs wouldn’t budge. That’s paint, a corroded latch spring, or a sash swollen into its track. It’s a stuck window repair, not a cleaning problem, and once it’s fixed every future cleaning is an inside job again.

Nothing moved, and there are no tabs. Either the window never had a tilt (fixed and picture glass, many casements, most floor-to-ceiling glass), or the mechanism is there and the balances are gone. Quick check: raise the sash and let go. If it slides back down, the balance has failed, and it should be replaced before anyone tilts that window: window balance repair.

Explanations of those two tabs regularly go around r/AskNYC, and the replies are mostly people who have lived here ten years and never knew.

Cleaning the outside from inside, step by step

Double-hung that tilts:

1. Clear the sill and lay a towel along it. The sash will drip.
2. Raise the bottom sash a few inches, slide both tabs to the center and tilt the sash in until it rests flat or on the stop. Support it with one hand the whole time; a tilted sash is heavier than it looks.
3. Wash the outside face with warm water and a few drops of dish soap, using a strip washer or a microfiber cloth. City grime is mostly soot and grease, so plain glass cleaner tends to smear it around.
4. Squeegee from top to bottom and wipe the blade after every stroke. Dry the edges with a lint-free cloth.
5. Tilt the sash back up until both tabs click into the track, then raise and lower it once. If it doesn’t stay where you put it, stop using the tilt and see the balance link above.
6. Lower the upper sash and repeat if it tilts too.

Casement (crank) windows: open fully. Some have hinges that leave a gap on the hinge side wide enough to reach the outside face with a cloth on a short handle. If yours open only a few inches, a window limiter or a building rule may be the reason. Don’t remove a limiter or a window guard to get more reach: guards are required where a child 10 or younger lives, and removing one is a violation.

Sliders: many sliding panels lift out of the bottom track. Lift up, swing the bottom toward you, clean it on a towel on the floor.

Fixed glass: no route from inside. Next section.

If it really doesn’t tilt: how high a pole reaches

Glass you can’t reach from inside gets cleaned from outside, and the method depends on your floor.

From the sidewalk, with a water-fed pole. A long carbon-fiber pole pumps purified water to a brush at the glass and is worked from the ground. No roof access, no rigging, no building sign-off. Equipment makers describe aluminum poles as useful up to about two stories, fiberglass about three, hybrid poles about four, and carbon fiber beyond that (window-cleaning-supply.com). Carbon poles are sold in lengths of 70 feet and more, but the practical limit from the ground is lower: in the industry’s own trade press, “60 feet tends to be the upper limit when working from the ground”, because above that the cleaner can’t see the dirt or control the pole (European Cleaning Journal).

In New York that usually means up to the fourth floor, sometimes the fifth. Pre-war ceilings are tall, and fire escapes, street trees, awnings and stoops all take reach away. Tell us your floor and address and you’ll get a yes or a no for your building.

Higher than that. Exterior glass means a rope descent from the roof, and that needs something only the building owner can produce. OSHA rule 1910.27(b)(1)(i) requires the owner to confirm in writing that each anchor has been identified, tested, certified and maintained, and holds at least 5,000 pounds per attached worker. No tenant can produce that paper, and neither can a group of tenants. What you can do is ask the managing agent one question: “Does the building hold current anchor certification, and what does a vendor need to submit to be approved for exterior window cleaning?” The answer tells you whether you’re looking at a scheduling problem or a two-year one. Some buildings already wash the whole facade on a schedule: high-rise window cleaning.

What your lease says about outside cleaning

If you rent on the standard lease from the Real Estate Board of New York, the clause is paragraph 11.A in the rent-stabilized form and 10.A in the market-rate form:

“You will not allow any windows in the Apartment to be cleaned from the outside, unless the equipment and safety devices required by law are used.”

It’s a condition, not a ban. “You will not allow” covers anyone you hire, not just you. The residential form never names the law it means; the commercial version of the same clause does, and it’s New York Labor Law section 202, which puts the duty to provide safe means for window cleaning on the building’s owner, agent and manager. Section 202 also says it does not apply to “multiple dwellings six stories or less in height.”

So in a walkup the state window-cleaning rule doesn’t reach your building at all, but your lease still does, and so does gravity. Tilting a sash in is not cleaning “from the outside” in any sense the clause cares about, and a pole from the sidewalk keeps everyone on the ground, where there’s no height equipment for the law to require. That’s our reading, not legal advice; the lease form and statute were pulled on October 1, 2026.

If you own in a co-op or condo, the same restriction usually sits in the proprietary lease or house rules.

Does anyone have to wash it for you?

No. The Housing Maintenance Code requires the owner to keep the premises in good repair and to paint exterior window frames and sashes at least once every five years (section 27-2014). Glass isn’t in it, and dirt isn’t something HPD inspects.

Two narrow exceptions. In a rent-stabilized or rent-controlled building that used to wash the outside and stopped, that can be a decrease in services, filed with DHCR on Form RA-81 for one apartment or RA-84 for the building; DHCR treats four years or more of silence as presumptive evidence the condition is minor, so timing matters. And if a sidewalk shed or scaffold from facade work is blocking your windows, tenants have obtained rent abatements for loss of light and air.

Broken glass, a sash that won’t close or lock, and a missing window guard are different: those are repairs the owner owes you, and they go through a written request and then 311.

Haze between the panes that won’t wipe off isn’t dirt either. It’s a failed seal, and no cleaning fixes it: foggy glass in co-ops and condos.

Having it done for one apartment

We take single-apartment jobs: inside glass, the outside of every sash that tilts, and the outside of low-floor fixed glass from the sidewalk where a pole reaches. A visit has a minimum, and how pricing works for one apartment is in our guide to window cleaning costs in NYC. If neighbors on your line want the same thing, splitting one visit is usually the cheapest route: how NYC residents share a window cleaning visit.

Many buildings want a certificate of insurance before any contractor goes upstairs. Ours names the building as additional insured and arrives within 24 to 48 hours: insurance details.

Not sure which of the three tilt answers you have? Send a photo of the top edge of your bottom sash and tell us what happened when you tried the test.

Frequently asked questions