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"Kitchen near me" usually means one of three different jobs, and they cost wildly different amounts. A full fit-out replaces the carcasses, doors, worktop and sometimes the layout. A refresh swaps doors and a worktop onto existing cabinet boxes. A repair fixes hinges, a leaking sink connection or a chipped countertop. Get clear on which one you're asking for before you call anyone, because a showroom that only does full fit-outs will quote you AED 40,000 for a job a handyman could do for AED 800.
Full fit-outs and showrooms cluster in Al Quoz, particularly along the industrial streets between Sheikh Zayed Road and Al Khail Road, where joinery workshops, quartz suppliers and appliance importers sit within a few minutes of each other. Ras Al Khor has a smaller cluster of larger manufacturers with their own factories. If you want to see materials in person rather than trust a PDF render, these two areas are worth a Saturday morning. Karama and Deira have cheaper carpentry outfits doing door-and-worktop refreshes at lower margins, which suits rented apartments where you're not planning to stay five years.
Kitchen companies in Dubai quote per linear metre of cabinetry, and this is where most confusion happens because "per metre" can mean base units only, or base plus wall units, or everything including the worktop. Ask which before comparing two quotes, because a AED 1,800/metre quote with worktop included beats a AED 1,500/metre quote that doesn't.
As a working guide: laminate cabinets with standard hinges run AED 1,200-1,800 per linear metre. Mid-range acrylic or matte-lacquer finishes with soft-close Blum or Hettich hardware sit at AED 2,200-3,200 per metre. High-gloss lacquer, German brands (Nobilia, Häcker) or fully custom joinery start around AED 3,800 and climb past AED 6,000 for large islands with integrated lighting and pop-up sockets. A typical 3-4 metre galley kitchen in a JLT or Business Bay apartment therefore lands somewhere between AED 15,000 for a basic laminate job and AED 45,000-plus for a mid-to-high-end one, before appliances.
Worktops are priced separately and by the square foot installed: laminate AED 80-150, granite AED 150-300, engineered quartz AED 250-450 depending on brand (Caesarstone and Silestone sit at the top of that range). Sinks, taps and appliances are usually excluded from the headline number, so a quote that looks suspiciously cheap has often just left everything except the boxes out of the total.
If you rent, your tenancy contract almost certainly requires written landlord consent for alterations, and most landlords will refuse anything that moves the sink, hob or gas point rather than swaps like-for-like. Moving a gas connection needs approval through the building's gas supplier (often a third-party provider, not DEWA directly, in many towers) and sometimes Civil Defence sign-off, which adds two to four weeks to any timeline that involves relocating a hob. Skip this step and you risk a failed Ejari renewal inspection or a dispute over your security deposit when you move out.
For villas and townhouses where you own or have full landlord cooperation, DEWA involvement is usually limited to electrical load changes if you're adding a built-in oven, induction hob or larger extractor — worth checking your existing meter capacity before ordering appliances, since undersized supply is a common reason installations get delayed at the final stage.
A written quote from a legitimate company, operating under a DED trade licence for joinery or kitchen furniture (not a freelance permit), should itemise enough that you could hand it to a second company and get a comparable price. If a quote is one lump sum with no breakdown, that's not necessarily dishonest, but it makes it impossible to negotiate intelligently or spot where corners were cut.
VAT at 5% should appear as a line item, not be silently included or, worse, omitted with a cash-discount offer. A company that can't issue a proper tax invoice with a TRN number isn't operating the way DED and the FTA require, and if something goes wrong later you'll have no paper trail to fall back on.
Ask who does the actual installation — their own tradesmen or a subcontracted crew booked per job. Subcontracting isn't automatically bad, but a company that can't tell you who's coming to your home, or gives a vague answer about "the team," often has weaker quality control. Ask what happens if a cabinet arrives damaged or the wrong colour: a proper company has a standard remake-and-replace policy; a smaller operator may ask you to accept a discount instead of a fix.
Ask whether the quoted price is fixed once you've signed off on the design, or subject to change if measurements shift during installation. Reputable companies lock the price at design sign-off and absorb small site variances; others use vague final-measurement clauses to add 10-15% at the last stage, which is one of the most common sources of dispute in this trade.
Demand for kitchen fit-outs spikes twice a year: in early summer, when families travel for six to eight weeks and want disruptive work done while the flat is empty, and in September-October, when new tenants move in after the summer rental turnover. Lead times stretch to 6-8 weeks in both windows. If your kitchen isn't urgent, booking in November or February gets you faster turnaround and slightly more negotiating room on price, since workshops have spare capacity and are more willing to shave a few hundred dirhams off a metre rate to keep their teams busy.
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