Interior Fit Out in Dubai: What a Fair Quote and a Proper Contractor Look Like

Fit-out costs in Dubai are quoted per square foot, and that single number tells you more about a contractor's honesty than anything they say in a meeting. For a basic commercial office in Business Bay or JLT — painted plasterboard partitions, standard ceiling tiles, laminate flooring, no bespoke joinery — expect AED 150 to 250 per sqft. A mid-range fit-out with glazed partitions, branded reception joinery and a proper AV setup runs AED 250 to 400 per sqft. Anything with imported stone, custom cabinetry or a full MEP overhaul pushes past AED 450 and can reach AED 700 for law firms and finance offices in DIFC that want the space to look the part. Retail units in malls tend to sit higher again, AED 400 to 900 per sqft, because mall landlords impose their own fit-out manuals with specific materials, fire-rated finishes and shopfront specifications that add cost regardless of your own design brief. Residential fit-outs for villas in Jumeirah or Arabian Ranches typically land between AED 250 and 550 per sqft depending on whether you're doing joinery-heavy kitchens and wardrobes or a simpler paint-and-flooring refresh.

If a quote arrives without a per-sqft rate or a bill of quantities, treat it as a placeholder, not a price.

What a proper quote actually contains

A serious fit-out contractor gives you a bill of quantities (BOQ) broken down by trade: civil and partitioning, MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing), ceilings and lighting, flooring, joinery, painting, fire and life safety, and a contingency line of around 10%. VAT at 5% should be shown separately, not buried. Payment is staged against milestones — typically 20% on signing, then tranches tied to completion of civil works, MEP rough-in, joinery installation and final handover, with a 5-10% retention held back for a defects liability period of 90 to 365 days. If a contractor asks for 50% upfront with no milestone structure, that's a company managing its own cash flow problems on your project, not yours.

The approvals nobody mentions until it's late

Almost every commercial fit-out in Dubai needs a permit before work starts, and which authority issues it depends on where your unit sits. Mainland offices and retail units go through Dubai Municipality's Building Permit section, which requires an NOC from your landlord plus drawings stamped by a DM-approved consultant. If you're in a free zone — DIFC, DMCC in JLT, TECOM in Media City, or Dubai South — the fit-out approval runs through that free zone's own planning authority instead, and each has slightly different drawing formats and submission timelines, usually two to four weeks. Skip this step and you risk a stop-work order mid-project, which is far more expensive than the permit fee itself. On top of the base permit, any work touching fire alarms, sprinklers or smoke detection needs separate Dubai Civil Defence approval, and a contractor who hasn't handled a civil defence submission before will underestimate both the cost and the four-to-six week lead time it typically adds.

Landlords in buildings managed under RERA rules will also want to see your fit-out drawings and often insist on their own approved MEP contractor for connections to base-building systems, particularly chilled water and fire systems. Get this in writing before you commission drawings, because redesigning around a landlord's MEP restrictions after the fact wastes weeks.

Questions that expose a contractor who isn't ready for your project

Ask to see their DED trade license and confirm the activity listed is building contracting or interior decoration, not a general trading license someone is stretching to cover fit-out work — this happens more than people expect, especially with smaller outfits pitching residential jobs in Karama or Al Barsha. Ask which building or free zone authority they've submitted permits to in the last six months and get a name you can call. Ask whether they carry Contractor's All Risk insurance and third-party liability cover; a fire or water damage incident during works without this insurance becomes your financial problem, not theirs. Ask for the defects liability period in writing — twelve months is standard for commercial work, and a contractor unwilling to commit to this is telling you they don't expect the work to hold up.

• Trade license activity matches the scope of work you're commissioning
• Named references from a permit submission with the relevant authority (DM, DIFC, DMCC, TECOM) in the past six months
• Contractor's All Risk and third-party liability insurance certificates, not just a verbal assurance
• Written defects liability period of at least 90 days, ideally 12 months for commercial fit-outs
• Itemised BOQ with VAT shown separately and no more than 20-30% requested upfront

Timing your project around the Dubai calendar

Fit-out demand and site conditions shift with the seasons more than most people realise. Ministry of Human Resources rules ban outdoor manual labour during the midday hours from mid-June to mid-September, which slows any work involving external elevations, signage installation or rooftop plant. Indoor fit-out isn't directly affected, but contractors juggling multiple sites often shift their better crews onto interior jobs during this period, which can actually work in your favour if you're doing an office or retail fit-out over summer. The trade-off is that AC load calculations and DEWA approvals for additional cooling capacity — common in retail units with heavy equipment — take longer in peak summer months when DEWA's own workload spikes. Retail fit-outs timed for a Ramadan or peak winter-season opening (October to March, when footfall in Dubai's malls and Downtown is highest) need to start drawings and permits four to five months out, because civil defence and mall landlord approvals both add weeks you can't compress by throwing more workers at the site.

Where the workshops and showrooms actually are

If you want to see joinery quality before committing, Al Quoz is where most of Dubai's fit-out workshops, carpentry units and stone suppliers operate, and a contractor who can walk you through their own Al Quoz workshop rather than a subcontracted one is generally a safer bet for bespoke joinery work. Sheikh Zayed Road and Al Quoz also host most of the furniture and finishing showrooms contractors will take you to for material selection, so factor a couple of site and showroom visits into your timeline before drawings are finalised — changing material specifications after the BOQ is signed is where fit-out budgets quietly balloon by 15-20%.