Interior Painting in Dubai

A studio is one room plus a kitchen run and a bathroom. The wall count is small. The ceiling is the problem: it is one uninterrupted plane lit from a single window, and every roller overlap shows on it at four in the afternoon.

A 1 BHK repaint means the bedroom, the hall, the kitchen walls above the tiles, the corridor and the ceilings. In a 2 BHK there is a second bedroom and, in most towers, a second bathroom with its own ceiling. Most 3 BHK layouts put a maid's room off the kitchen, and that room is scoped separately for a reason: it is usually windowless, it takes the ironing steam, and its walls are the worst in the unit.

Excluded unless the quote lists them: wardrobe interiors, kitchen cabinet doors, metal entrance doors, balcony ceilings (those are exterior scope and sit on the exterior painting page), tiled areas, and decorative or textured finishes.

What pushes a job above the "From" figure in the price guide: wallpaper stripping, a dark colour going back to white, chased walls after electrical or AC work, water stains that need a stain-block primer, textured ceilings, and a double-height hall that needs an interior tower.

This page prices the interior repaint: walls and the ceilings the line names, in the colour you choose, with the furniture worked around. The walls-only white repaint an agent expects at the end of a lease is a cheaper product with its own table starting at AED 600 on the move-out painting page; the two tables describe different jobs.

Board joints crack along the tape line when the building moves in the summer heat. The repair is mesh tape bedded in filler, then a second wider pass after the first has dried, then sanding until you cannot feel the edge with a flat palm. Screw heads pop through the paper face as a small dome; each one gets driven, filled and spot-primed.

A chased wall is the one that catches people out. After an electrician runs a new socket, or the AC technician cuts a chase for a drain line, the channel is packed with cement mortar. Painted the same week, the mortar shrinks and the filler on top of it sinks with it, leaving a straight shallow trough the width of the chase. You will not see it under the ceiling downlights. You will see it as a shadow line under raking light from the window, and it will be in every photograph an agent takes at handover. Two filler passes, the second only after the first has fully dried, then a spot-prime so the filler does not flash as a dull patch inside a sheen finish.

Fresh cement is alkaline. That is why Jotun's exterior system specifies an alkali-resistant primer over cement plaster, and the same alkalinity sits in an interior render patch. Emulsion rolled straight onto it goes patchy and chalky within weeks. Prime it first.

A water stain that comes back through a fresh repaint is not a paint problem, it is a moisture problem, and it belongs on the water damage, damp and mould repaint page.

Ceilings decide whether a walls-only job looks finished. Repaint the walls in a brighter white and leave a five-year-old ceiling and the ceiling turns yellow by comparison. Decide the ceilings at the survey, not on day two.

If you rent, a colour change needs the landlord's written agreement first: Dubai's tenancy law says the tenant may not make changes to the property without the landlord's permission. At the end of the lease the walls go back to the colour you received, which is why the move-out and end of tenancy repaint has its own page.

Kitchens carry a grease film you cannot see. Above the hob and along the extractor line the wall needs a sugar-soap wash and a rinse, or the new coat slides off the grease within a month. A bathroom without an extractor and with the door kept shut all day will defeat any paint on the market; the coating buys time, the ventilation fixes the cause.

The maid's room is the smallest room and the most abused wall in the unit. It takes the iron, the drying rack and often no window. Scope it as a wet room, not a bedroom.

Room by room means one bedroom is always usable. Furniture goes to the centre under cotton sheets, the wardrobe fronts are taped, and the bedroom you sleep in tonight was painted yesterday.

Towers add a permit layer. Building management asks the contractor for a work permit package, typically a trade licence copy, insurance, scope and dates, and it books a service-lift slot for materials. What the permit does not say, and every tower enforces, is that nothing stands in the common corridor: no drums, no ladder, no folded sheets outside your door, because the neighbours and the fire route come first. In an occupied apartment the balcony becomes the store for the day, the drums sit on a sheet out there, and the corridor stays clear from the first trip up to the last trip down. The security desk holds the crew's ID cards for the day and hands them back at sign-out; that is asked at the survey so the schedule is real before you move the sofa.

Low-rise and walk-up blocks next, where there is often no lift to book and the access question is a stairwell instead: JVC, Jumeirah Village Triangle, Discovery Gardens, Al Furjan, Arjan, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai Production City, Remraam, Town Square, Liwan, International City, Dubai South, and the apartment side of Sports City and Motor City.

Then the older city stock: Deira, Bur Dubai, Al Karama, Al Nahda, Oud Metha, Al Satwa, Al Barsha, Al Quoz and Mirdif. Whether a given wall there is gypsum board, gypsum skim or cement render is established on the visit rather than assumed from the address, and the prep that follows from it is set out further up this page.

A studio or a 1 BHK in any of the above is a one-day job, a 2 BHK is a one-day job, and a 3 BHK is two. The building changes the access, the permit and the hour work can start. It does not change the coats.