Render, façades, boundary walls and the summer clock. Primer-and-two-coat system to the manufacturer datasheet, scheduled around the midday break. On a managed community the colour is approved before the first coat.
A villa exterior is four elevations, the boundary wall inside and out, the garage door, the pedestrian and driveway gates, the window grilles and any railings. A townhouse is two elevations, a side return and a shared boundary wall, with the rear reachable only through the house or the neighbour's garden. A building façade is a different purchase again: it belongs to the Owners Association, not to any one unit, and it is quoted as its own programme further down this page.
Balcony soffits and walls sit in the exterior scope even though you reach them from inside. Gates and railings count as exterior too. Metalwork is its own trade: rust converted, an anti-corrosion primer, then a topcoat that survives a gate being slammed every day, and it is quoted by the item rather than by the square metre. Roof waterproofing does not sit here at all; a roof that leaks is a membrane job, and paint on top of a failed membrane is money on the floor.
Dubai villa walls are cement render over concrete block, and the exterior datasheet used here lists exactly that substrate family: cement plaster, concrete, block work, rendered surfaces. Render fails in three ways and each is found before anything is opened. Hollow render sounds drummy under a knuckle and is cut out and re-rendered. Cracks along the block joints are raked and filled with an exterior filler that stays flexible. Chalking, the powder that comes off on a palm, is a spent paint film that has to be washed and stabilised or the new coat bonds to dust rather than to the wall.
Fresh render and fresh concrete are alkaline, and the datasheet answers that directly with an alkali-resistant primer under the topcoat. Skip it and the emulsion goes patchy and chalky within the first summer. Efflorescence, the white bloom that salts leave as water evaporates from the render, is brushed off dry; washed in, it dissolves back into the wall and comes through the new film again.
The Jotun Jotashield ColourXtreme datasheet issued for the UAE sets the system at two coats over an acrylic emulsion primer, an alkali-resistant primer or a penetrating primer, at 35 to 50 microns dry film per coat. A coat rolled out to twice its coverage area is half its specified film, which is why the number of tins on the job is checked against the wall area rather than against the day.
Its application conditions are two figures. The substrate must be at least 10 degrees Celsius, and it must be at least 3 degrees Celsius above the dew point. Its drying table is published for substrates at 10, 23 and 40 degrees Celsius; at 40 degrees the coat is touch-dry in two hours and can be recoated after two hours. The sheet states no maximum application temperature and no maximum ambient temperature. It gives a VOC content of 22 grams per litre, describes the product as an anti-carbonation coating for concrete, and rates crack bridging at 0.1 millimetres. Jotun's product page for Jotashield Extreme separately claims heat reflection and protection of up to ten years; Dulux's Arabia page for Weathershield claims protection against UV and heat up to 50 degrees Celsius and against condensation, and instructs a fungicidal treatment of any mould or algae before application.
Dew point is the figure that bites, and it bites in the humid months rather than the hot ones. In late August and September the outdoor dew point at dawn sits close to the temperature of a shaded wall, and a wall that is fine to paint at ten was sweating at six. The check is made on the day, on the wall being painted. A coat that goes on inside the datasheet margin traps water under the film and lifts within the first summer.
Any surface-temperature figure quoted on a website without a datasheet behind it is folklore. The numbers above are the ones that carry a manufacturer's name.
Standard exterior emulsion is the baseline in the price guide below and the right choice on a wall in good condition in a community palette colour. A heat-reflective topcoat is chosen for a west or south elevation that bakes, and both major manufacturers publish one. An elastomeric coating is chosen for a wall that has cracked along the block joints and will keep moving; a silicone-resin or breathable system is chosen for a wall that has to let residual moisture out, which is the balcony-soffit case below. The class is decided at the survey from what the wall is doing, and it is written into the quote by name so that the tin on site can be checked against the paper.
The balcony ceiling is the underside of the slab of the flat above. That slab is cooled from the room over it, so in August the soffit runs colder than the night air outside and the outdoor dew point sits above it. The soffit sweats every night. Standard emulsion on a sweating soffit lifts in sheets by the second summer. The fix is a coating specified for condensation applied to a soffit that has been allowed to dry, never a gloss that seals water in.
On a master-planned community the villa's exterior colour is controlled by the community management or the Owners Association, and a colour change goes through a no-objection process, the NOC, before work starts; a same-colour repaint may still need notification. The one developer that publishes its timings openly is Meraas: a major modification NOC takes ten working days, a minor modification permit is issued the same day through its portal without charge, and unapproved work draws a violation notice with a deadline to remove it; it does not state which category a repaint falls into. Nothing else on this page is a developer's rule, because the other developers publish theirs on portals this page cannot quote.
Alongside the NOC, the contractor's side of the package is consistent across communities: trade licence, insurance certificate, dates, gate and vehicles, usually against a refundable deposit released after a completion inspection. Consultants report that the Palm and the free zones sit under a different permitting authority from Dubai Municipality, so the first question on any plot is which authority it answers to. How the completion inspection goes, and how a colour match fails on it, is on the villa painting page.
The hard constraint on summer exterior work is federal law. From 15 June to 15 September, work under direct sunlight and in open areas is prohibited between 12:30 and 15:00, the working day is capped at eight hours split around the break, shaded rest areas are mandatory, and the penalty is 5,000 dirhams per worker up to 50,000 dirhams. In Ramadan the private-sector working day is cut by two hours, and community hours may shorten further.
A summer villa day runs the west elevation and the shaded boundary wall from first light, stops at 12:30, and takes the east elevation once it is in shade after three. Because the datasheet allows a recoat two hours after a first coat at a 40-degree substrate, the morning elevation can take its second coat the same afternoon if the first went on before the break. A shamal forecast stops the day: sand blown into a wet film cures as a texture that can only be sanded off and repainted.
A boundary wall is priced per square metre for both faces, and the two faces age differently. The garden face gets the sprinklers and the shade, the street face the sun and the sand, and the part that decides the life of both is the coping on top: a cracked or open coping lets water into the core of the wall from above, and no coating applied to either face will stop the film lifting once the wall is wet from the inside. Before either face is painted the coping is checked and sealed, or the boundary wall is not quoted. The blister line the irrigation leaves at the base, and what to do about it, is on the villa painting page. On a shared townhouse boundary, whose side and whose colour is agreed with the neighbour before the day, not on it.
Single- and two-storey villas are reached from mobile towers; taller façades from tubular scaffold or a boom lift where a scaffold base will not fit, and the access equipment is inside the quotation rather than on top of it. Façades above tower reach on a multi-storey building need rope access or a cradle under the technical guideline Dubai Municipality publishes for rope-access systems; that access is referred to a specialist access contractor and quoted separately, and the coating work is programmed around the access contractor's drops.
On a jointly owned building the external walls are common parts, not any unit owner's property, and their repainting is paid from service charges, the annual charges collected from owners to cover the management, operation, maintenance and repair of the jointly owned property. The buyer is the Owners Association or its management company, the procurement is a tender rather than a quote, and the specification is usually an anti-carbonation system on concrete with a cycle set by the reserve fund rather than by the weather. Hoarding of the ground floor, tenant notices and the building's own work permit are part of the programme; the rope or cradle access itself is referred to a specialist access contractor and quoted separately. Ask for a façade survey rather than a villa quote; they are not the same document.
Each line below covers pressure washing, filling and priming on walls in average condition, two coats of a standard exterior emulsion at the datasheet film, masking of glazing and metalwork, the access equipment the line names, and a clean site at the end of each day. Above the figure: render repair, a heat-reflective, elastomeric or silicone system in place of the standard emulsion, an extra coat for a colour change, and community deposits and permit fees, recharged at cost. The figures are per property, except the two lines priced per square metre, which are per face of wall. The quote names the coating system by product, Jotun, Dulux or an imported system chosen for the substrate, so that the tin on site can be checked against the paper.
Transparent pricing with no hidden fees. Final price confirmed after assessment.
From AED 4,000
All exterior walls, standard finish
From AED 6,000
Including boundary walls
From AED 10,000
Full exterior, premium coatings
From AED 15/sqm
Both sides, 2 coats
From AED 12/sqm
Including scaffolding
From AED 800
Walls, ceiling, railing
From AED 400
Standard double garage door
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PROTECH Dynamics serves all communities across Dubai
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Our emergency team responds 24/7 across all of Dubai.
Send the community name, the villa or facade size and the colour, and we will arrange a survey. The quote names the coating system by product and confirms the summer schedule before any first coat.
Available 24/7 for emergencies | info@protechfitout.com
