Comparing fit out companies in Dubai is less about who has the glossiest portfolio and more about who has written an honest quote. Ask three contractors to price the same 2,000 sq ft office and you can easily get AED 240,000, AED 310,000 and AED 420,000 back — and all three can be defensible, because they are quietly quoting different scopes, different specifications and different levels of responsibility for approvals. This guide shows you how to read a fit-out quote line by line, which licences and registrations to verify before you talk money, and how to normalise three proposals so you are comparing the same building rather than the same page count.
Key takeaways
- Three business models quote the same job very differently: design-and-build, a fit-out contractor working to someone else's drawings, and a main contractor supervised by a consultant.
- A comparable quote is priced by line — preliminaries, MEP, partitions, joinery, flooring, loose furniture — not as a single rate per square foot.
- Verify the trade licence activity, Civil Defence contractor registration and whether the company sits on your building's or free zone's approved list before you discuss price.
- Indicative 2026 Category B fit-out sits around AED 60–450 per sq ft; provisional sums and MEP upgrades are what move a quote after signing.
What fit-out companies in Dubai actually deliver
A fit-out company takes a space that is legally yours and makes it usable: partitions, ceilings, flooring, power, cooling, joinery and the approvals that let you switch the lights on. The label covers everything from a three-person joinery workshop in Al Quoz to a contractor with its own MEP division, in-house draughtsmen and a permits team — and the difference shows up in the quote long before it shows up on site.
Whatever the size of the company, a complete fit-out is made of five buckets, and every quote you receive is really a statement about how many of them the contractor is taking on:
- Construction works — partitions, ceilings, doors, flooring, tiling, painting and any dry-wall or layout changes.
- MEP — electrical distribution, HVAC modification, plumbing, fire detection and sprinkler alterations. On an office or an F&B unit this is routinely a quarter to 40% of the build cost.
- Joinery — reception desks, storage walls, kitchens, wardrobes, bespoke units. Almost always the longest lead item on the programme.
- Drawings and approvals — stamped drawing sets, building or landlord NOC, Dubai Civil Defence submission and inspection, DEWA applications, free-zone or Dubai Municipality permits.
- Handover — testing and commissioning, snagging, as-built drawings, warranty and O&M documents.
Nearly every dispute between an owner and a contractor in Dubai starts with one of those five buckets being assumed rather than written down. Before you can judge a price for renovation and fit-out, you have to be sure all three bidders are pricing all five.
Three kinds of fit-out company you will be quoting
Dubai contractors sell three fundamentally different arrangements, and a great deal of confusion in tender comparisons comes from putting all three on the same spreadsheet without adjusting for what each one includes.
| Model | How it is usually priced | Best when |
|---|---|---|
| Design-and-build | One contract covering concept, drawings, approvals and construction; a lump sum against an agreed specification | You want a single point of accountability and a firm move-in date, and you do not have a consultant already appointed |
| Fit-out contractor to supplied drawings | Priced against a drawing set and a bill of quantities you provide; cheapest headline rate, but design risk stays with you | Your designer has already produced a full technical set and you are running the tender yourself |
| Main contractor plus independent consultant | Construction contract plus a separate consultancy fee (typically a percentage of the works) | Large floors, heavy MEP, landlord-mandated supervision or an investor who wants independent certification of payments |
The model also decides who carries the cost of a mistake. Under design-and-build, a clash between the ceiling and the sprinkler layout is the contractor's problem. If you supplied the drawings, it is a variation — and variations are priced after you have signed, which is the worst possible moment to negotiate. That single point explains most of the gap between an apparently cheap tender and the final account.
Licences, registrations and approvals to check before you talk price
In Dubai, a permit is issued against the contractor, not against the client. If the company cannot submit, your drawings do not move, and no discount compensates for a project that cannot start. Five checks take an afternoon and remove most of the risk:
- Trade licence and activity — ask for the licence and read the listed activities. A licence for furniture trading or interior decoration is not a building-contracting activity, and building management will notice even if you do not.
- Dubai Civil Defence registration — fire and life-safety submissions can only be made by a registered contractor or consultant. Ask which entity will actually sign the Civil Defence submission for your unit.
- Approved contractor list — most towers, communities and free zones (DMCC, DIFC, JAFZA, Dubai South, and developers such as Emaar or Nakheel) maintain their own approved list. Check yours before shortlisting; getting a new contractor added is possible but adds weeks.
- Insurance — contractors' all-risk and third-party liability cover, with the policy actually current. Buildings typically demand a copy before issuing the fit-out NOC.
- Delivery record in your building type — a strong villa contractor is not automatically the right choice for a Grade-A tower with night-only working hours, lift bookings and a service-corridor protocol.
If you would rather start from a vetted shortlist than a search engine, our partner network is built around exactly these checks, and our guide on choosing between renovation companies in Dubai goes deeper on contracts and red flags for residential work.
Reading a fit-out quote line by line
A single rate per square foot is a marketing number, not a quote. What you want is a priced breakdown you can interrogate. As an indicative 2026 picture, a Category B office fit-out in Dubai runs roughly AED 60–450 per sq ft depending on grade — our office fit-out guide breaks those bands down — and a well-structured quote distributes that total roughly as follows.
| Line item | Typical share | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Preliminaries (prelims) | 8–15% | Site supervision, permits, insurance, hoarding, waste removal, protection, out-of-hours working. A quote with no prelims line has hidden them somewhere less visible |
| MEP | 25–40% | Whether existing cooling and electrical loads are being reused or upgraded, and who pays if DEWA requires a load increase |
| Partitions, ceilings and doors | 15–25% | Gypsum specification, acoustic rating between meeting rooms, glass thickness and whether ironmongery is included |
| Joinery | 10–25% | Board type and edging, worktop material, soft-close hardware, and the lead time quoted for bespoke items |
| Flooring and finishes | 8–15% | Product code, not just "porcelain tile"; skirting, transitions and levelling screed are the usual omissions |
| Loose furniture and AV | 0–20% | Frequently excluded entirely. If it matters to your move-in date, it belongs in the same programme |
| Provisional and PC sums | Varies | Every one of these is an unagreed price. Count them and total them before comparing bidders |
Read the exclusions page with more attention than the price page. Common exclusions that later arrive as variations: authority fees and the refundable fit-out deposit, after-hours working charges, builder's work for third-party AV or IT contractors, replacement of failed existing services discovered on opening up, and final cleaning. None of these are unreasonable to exclude — they are only unreasonable to discover.
Provisional sums: the number that moves after you sign
A provisional sum is a placeholder for work that is not yet specified; a prime cost (PC) sum is an allowance for a product you have not yet chosen — AED 150 per sq m for floor tile, for example. Both are legitimate tools, and both are the mechanism by which a fit-out quote grows by 15% between signature and handover. The cheapest-looking tender is very often simply the one with the largest provisional allowances.
How to compare three quotes that look nothing alike
Normalising tenders is mechanical work, and doing it properly is worth more than any amount of negotiation on the headline figure. Work through it in this order:
- Fix the scope before you tender — issue the same drawing set, finishes schedule and list of inclusions to everyone. Without this, you are not running a comparison, you are collecting opinions.
- Demand the same breakdown — ask for the six or seven line items above. A contractor who will not break down a price is telling you something about how variations will be handled later.
- Strip out provisional sums — compare the firm-priced portion, then compare the allowances separately.
- Align the specifications — convert every "equivalent" into a named product for the three or four finishes that dominate the cost: floor, joinery board, sanitaryware, lighting.
- Compare programmes, not just prices — ask for a week-by-week programme showing when approvals are submitted and when long-lead joinery is ordered. If procurement starts after approvals rather than alongside them, add three to four weeks to that bid.
- Check who carries approvals — confirm in writing that the contractor submits to building management and Civil Defence, and who pays the authority fees.
- Sanity-check the total — run your area and grade through the renovation cost calculator. A bid 30% below the band is not a bargain; it is an incomplete scope, and you will pay the difference as variations.
One more filter worth applying: ask each bidder what they think will go wrong. A contractor who has genuinely walked your unit will name something specific — a chilled-water valve that needs replacing, a slab level that will not take the floor build-up you want, a riser that cannot take another data run. A contractor who says nothing will go wrong has not looked.
Contract, payment schedule and warranty
The contract is where the comparison you just did either holds or evaporates. Whatever the size of the job, the document should name a fixed scope with the drawing revision and finishes schedule attached, a completion date with a defined mechanism for extensions, a variation procedure requiring written approval before any extra work begins, and a defects liability period — twelve months is the usual benchmark for fit-out, with separate manufacturer warranties on equipment.
Payment should follow progress rather than the calendar. A workable structure for a mid-size fit-out looks like this:
- Mobilisation — 20–30% on signature, covering procurement of long-lead items.
- Milestone payments — two or three tranches against verifiable completion: first fix and MEP rough-in, second fix and joinery installation, finishes complete.
- Practical completion — a payment released after the Civil Defence inspection and handover documents, not before.
- Retention — 5–10% held through the defects period and released after snagging is closed. This is the single clause that determines how quickly anyone returns your call in month three.
Be wary of any structure that front-loads more than about a third of the contract value, and of a company that will only issue an invoice rather than a signed contract. If the fit-out is part of a larger project with interior design or a furniture package, agree in writing which contract owns the interfaces — the joinery-to-flooring junction and the AV-to-electrical interface are where two-contractor projects lose weeks.
How A5renova works as a fit-out company in Dubai
We work design-and-build, which means one contract and one accountable team from concept to handover: drawings, building and Civil Defence approvals, construction, MEP, joinery and snagging under a fixed scope, with the programme built around when approvals realistically land rather than when we would like them to. Our quotes are issued as a line-by-line breakdown with provisional sums flagged and totalled, so you can compare us properly against anyone else. If you need the space designed as well as built, interior design runs from the same table as renovation and fit-out, and furnishing can be scheduled into the same programme so the furniture arrives the week the snagging closes. Send us the unit, the authority and your target opening date, and you will get a real programme and a quote you can interrogate.
Frequently asked questions
How much do fit-out companies in Dubai charge per square foot?+
As an indicative 2026 guide, a Category B office fit-out runs around AED 60–120 per sq ft for a basic functional build, AED 120–250 for a mid-range corporate space and AED 250–450 and above for high-end work. The rate assumes you are building on a finished Category A base. Meeting-room density, glass partitions, bespoke joinery, upgraded cooling and electrical loads, and AV move the number most.
How do I check if a fit-out company in Dubai is legitimate?+
Ask for the trade licence and read the listed activities — interior decoration or furniture trading is not building contracting. Confirm the company is registered to make Dubai Civil Defence submissions, holds current contractors' all-risk and third-party liability insurance, and appears on the approved contractor list for your building, community or free zone. Finally, ask for two recent projects in a similar building type and call the clients.
Why do fit-out quotes for the same office differ so much?+
Usually because they are not quoting the same job. The common causes are different MEP assumptions about reusing or upgrading existing loads, different finishes hidden behind the phrase "or equivalent", large provisional and prime cost sums in the cheaper bid, and different positions on who handles and pays for approvals. Strip out the provisional sums and align the specifications and the gap typically narrows to under 15%.
What is a provisional sum in a fit-out quote?+
A provisional sum is money allowed for work that has not yet been specified in enough detail to price; a prime cost sum is an allowance for a product you have not yet selected, such as floor tile or sanitaryware. Both are normal, but both are unagreed prices that get settled after you have signed. Total them across every bid before comparing, because the cheapest tender is often simply the one carrying the largest allowances.
Should I use a design-and-build fit-out company or hire a designer separately?+
Design-and-build gives you one contract, one programme and one party responsible when a ceiling detail clashes with the sprinkler layout, which usually means a firmer completion date. Appointing a designer separately gives you more control over the concept and a tender you can competitively price, but design risk and coordination stay with you. For most offices and apartments under a few thousand square feet, design-and-build is faster and ends closer to the original budget.
How long does a fit-out take in Dubai?+
A straightforward Category B office fit-out typically takes about four to ten weeks end to end: one to three weeks for design and drawings, one to three weeks for building and Civil Defence approvals, three to eight weeks for construction and MEP, and one to two weeks for testing, inspection and handover. Bespoke joinery and imported furniture are the usual long-lead items, so they should be ordered while approvals are still running.
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