In this guide
Hiring an interior design studio in Dubai sounds like one service, but three very different things are sold under that name: attractive images, a complete set of working drawings, and supervision to make sure what gets built matches them. The price gap between them is five to tenfold, and that confusion is where most projects come apart — an owner pays for visuals, takes them to a contractor and discovers there is nothing to build from. This guide covers what a proper design package contains, how the stages run, what it costs per square metre on 2026 indications, how to vet a studio, and what belongs in the contract.
- A design package is not renders: it is layouts, details, wall elevations, electrical and plumbing drawings, and finish and furniture schedules.
- Indicative 2026 rates: concept AED 40–90 per sq m, full package with working drawings AED 120–350, premium studios AED 350 and up.
- "Free" design bundled with a renovation almost always means a narrow supplier pool and no full working drawings — fine, if you know the trade-off.
- Time goes on approvals and lead times, not renders: allow 6–12 weeks for the package and 4–12 weeks for furniture procurement.
01What a design package actually contains
The most useful opening question for any studio is not the price but "what do I receive, file by file". A complete Dubai package usually has five parts:
- Space planning — a measured survey, zoning, furniture layout, and two or three plan options with an honest read on the trade-offs of each.
- Concept — the style direction, palette, key materials, moodboards and 3D visuals of the main rooms. This is the part that appears on social media.
- Working drawings — wall elevations, floor and ceiling plans, junction details, lighting and socket layouts, plumbing set-outs, tile-setting drawings. This is what gets built from.
- Schedules — a finishes schedule and an FF&E schedule with product codes, suppliers, quantities and a line-by-line budget.
- Design supervision — site visits, checking work against the drawings, approving substitutions and signing off stages.
Parts three and four are what you are really paying for, and they are exactly what cheap packages leave out. A project without elevations and details still gets finished on site — but the decisions are made by a foreman rather than a designer, and rarely in your favour.
02The stages, from brief to working drawings
Every competent studio follows roughly the same order, and breaking it is expensive — changing the layout once elevations have started means redrawing half the set:
- Brief and survey — how the space will be used, whether it is for you or for letting, the construction budget, and a measured survey of the unit as built rather than as drawn.
- Space planning — zoning options and sign-off on one; this is where moving walls or wet areas is decided.
- Concept and visuals — palette, materials, 3D of the main rooms, one or two rounds of revisions.
- Working drawings — the full set a contractor can price and build from.
- Schedules and budget — finishes, furniture, lighting and sanitaryware with suppliers and lead times.
- Approvals package — drawings in the format building management will accept and, where the layout changes, Dubai Municipality.
- Supervision and handover — scheduled visits, written site reports, final inspection with a snag list.
Pay in stages and take delivery of the files at the end of each one. An "80% up front, documents at the end" structure is the clearest signal that you will never see working drawings.
03How much interior design costs in Dubai per square metre
Fees are quoted per square metre, as a fixed sum per property, or as a percentage of the construction budget. The 2026 ranges below are indicative for Dubai, and they track the depth of the package far more than a studio's profile.
| Service | Indicative 2026 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Space planning only | 25–60 per sq m | Survey, zoning, furniture layout |
| Concept with visuals | 40–90 per sq m | Palette, materials, 3D of main rooms |
| Full package with working drawings | 120–350 per sq m | Drawings, details, layouts, schedules |
| Premium studio, bespoke approach | 350–800 and up per sq m | Custom joinery, complex details, close supervision |
| Fixed fee, one-bedroom apartment | 12,000–40,000 | Full package for 60–90 sq m |
| Fixed fee, four to five-bedroom villa | 70,000–300,000 | Full package, several levels, external areas |
| Percentage of construction budget | 8–15% | Common on large and premium projects |
| Supervision priced separately | 4,000–15,000 per month | Site visits, checking, approving substitutions |
One local reality deserves naming: design offered free when you award the renovation. It is a legitimate model, but the trade-off is real — the scheme is drawn around an in-house supplier pool, full working drawings are usually absent, and you can no longer change contractor without losing the design. If one team is doing everything anyway, it saves money; if you want comparable quotes, pay for the design separately. To size the construction budget first, request an estimate — an engineer will price your property.
04What moves the fee
The spread in those ranges comes from a handful of concrete factors rather than a designer's profile:
- Depth of the set — drawing count grows faster than area: three bathrooms with different tile layouts cost more than one large living room.
- Layout changes — moving walls and wet areas adds approvals and engineering drawings.
- Bespoke furniture — joinery and made-to-measure pieces need their own details and workshop drawings.
- Revision rounds — two are normally included; a third onward is charged, and reasonably so.
- Supervision frequency — weekly versus monthly is a multiple in fee, and it affects the result more than the quality of the renders.
- Own use or letting — a rental unit is designed for wear and budget, an owner's home for habits; they are different volumes of work.
05How to choose an interior design studio in Dubai
Portfolios are a weak filter here: renders can be bought, and photographs of finished work are easily borrowed from suppliers. Check other things instead:
- Licence and legal entity — a valid trade licence with the right activity, and invoices issued by the same entity named in the contract.
- A sample working set — ask for an anonymised full package from a past project. If none exists, you are buying pictures.
- Built work, not renders — site photography, ideally with an owner you can speak to.
- Experience with your asset type — a tower with its own rules, a villa in an Emaar or Nakheel community, and a commercial unit are three different sets of constraints.
- Knowledge of local supply — a serious studio quotes realistic lead times per item and offers local alternatives to imports.
- Who runs the job — the name of the person who will be on site, not only the partner who sold it to you.
It is worth reading this against how the interior design process in Dubai works generally, and for houses against the logic of villa interior design, where the documentation set is considerably larger.
06What belongs in the contract
A design contract is first of all a list of files and dates, not a description of a creative method. The minimum: deliverables per stage, the number of revision rounds included, a date for each stage, the price of extra revisions, supervision terms, a licence to use the drawings, and an exit clause that settles payment for completed stages.
07Timelines and where they slip
The design itself takes less time than people expect; the waiting is approvals and lead times:
| Stage | Typical duration |
|---|---|
| Brief and measured survey | 3–7 days |
| Space planning | 1–2 weeks |
| Concept and visuals | 2–4 weeks |
| Working drawings and schedules | 2–4 weeks |
| Approvals package and NOC | 1–4 weeks, building dependent |
| Furniture and finishes procurement | 4–12 weeks, longer for imports |
That is roughly 6–12 weeks to a finished package for an apartment and three to five months for a villa. Two things break the schedule: an owner who changes the layout after working drawings have started, and furniture ordered at the end, once the construction is already done.
08Dubai specifics you cannot design around
A scheme drawn without local rules and climate in mind gets redrawn at approval stage. What matters here and barely matters in Europe:
- Building management NOC — in towers all work runs on the building's permission, with its own working hours and deposit, and drawings are submitted in their format.
- Dubai Municipality — changes to layout, wet areas and structure go through approval, and in communities such as Emaar or Nakheel the developer also signs off on external elements.
- DEWA and Civil Defence — increased electrical load, and relocating sprinklers or detectors, pull in separate engineering submissions.
- Climate — sun and humidity drive the choice of fabrics, veneers and lacquers, and floor-to-ceiling glazing immediately raises the window treatment question.
- Supply — some items are stocked locally, others run 8–14 weeks; a schedule without lead times is useless for planning.
09How A5renova runs interior design
We produce interior design as a document you can build from: layouts, working drawings, schedules with lead times and a line-by-line budget, plus the package your building needs for approval. The scheme is costed against a real estimate from the start, because the same team delivers the renovation — moving wet areas, electrical routes and junction details are tested for buildability before you sign them off. Furniture, lighting and textiles come from the catalogue and through furnishing as one package, so delivery dates sit inside the construction programme instead of becoming a separate project afterwards. Send us the floor plan and the brief and we will come back with the deliverables, dates and a price.
