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For a standard apartment repaint using ordinary emulsion, most licensed contractors price by the room or by square footage. Expect AED 400 to 800 for a single bedroom (walls only, two coats, existing colour retained), and AED 1,200 to 2,500 for a full two-bedroom apartment including the living area, assuming the walls are in reasonable condition. Ceilings, if included, add roughly 15 to 20 percent to the total. A dramatic colour change — dark grey to white, for instance — usually needs a third coat and a stain-blocking primer, which pushes the price up by another AED 300 to 500 per room.
Villas scale differently because of exterior work and higher ceilings. A full interior repaint of a 3-bedroom villa in Arabian Ranches or Mirdif typically runs AED 6,000 to 12,000. Add exterior render and weatherproof coating and you're looking at AED 15,000 to 25,000 depending on plot size and how much scaffolding or access equipment is needed. If a quote for villa exterior work comes in dramatically below this, ask what product is being used — cheap acrylic paint on an exterior wall in Dubai's climate will chalk and fade within a year.
Villa exterior painting has a real seasonal window. Paint cures poorly above roughly 40°C, and Dubai's summer surface temperatures on a south-facing wall can exceed that by midday from June through September. Reputable contractors either work early mornings in summer or simply decline exterior jobs until October. If someone offers to paint your villa's exterior in July at a bargain rate, that's a red flag, not a bargain — the finish will likely fail within months.
Interior work runs year-round, but there's a practical wrinkle: painters need doors and windows closed for dust control, which means the AC has to keep running in the rooms being worked on, or the paint takes far longer to dry and off-gas. If you're painting an occupied apartment in Business Bay or Dubai Marina during summer, budget for higher DEWA usage during the job and ask the contractor how they'll ventilate once each coat is down.
Demand also shifts with the calendar. October to April is peak season for villa work, since most residents doing bigger jobs prefer to avoid the heat and because many people repaint before winter house guests arrive. Booking an apartment repaint in July or August, by contrast, often gets you faster availability and slightly softer pricing, since many contracting crews are quieter.
Nearly all legitimate painting work in Dubai runs through a DED-licensed contracting or building maintenance company, even for small jobs. You'll also find individual painters, often working out of shared accommodation in Al Quoz or Ras Al Khor, who take on private jobs directly for 30 to 40 percent less than a company quote. The saving is real, but so is the risk: an unlicensed individual has no trade licence to produce if something goes wrong, no insurance if they damage your marble flooring or a client's furniture, and no comeback if the finish fails within weeks. If your building's security or management asks for a contractor's company name and licence number before granting access — increasingly common in towers across JLT and Business Bay — an unlicensed painter simply won't get through the door.
Ask any company for their trade licence copy and confirm the painting or building maintenance activity is listed on it. Ask whether the crew on-site are direct employees or subcontracted for the day — subcontracted crews aren't necessarily worse, but you want to know who's accountable if the work is poor.
If you're a tenant, check your tenancy contract before repainting anything. Most standard Dubai leases require landlord consent for any change to wall colour, and many specify that the property must be returned to its original white or off-white shade at move-out — repainting a statement wall in a deep navy without checking this clause is a common and avoidable dispute at renewal time. For apartments in managed towers, building management sometimes requires advance notice or a permit for contractor access, particularly for jobs involving more than a day's work or any use of the service lift.
Villa owners doing exterior work in gated communities should check with the community management office too — some communities, particularly in Emirates Hills and parts of Arabian Ranches, have approved colour palettes and require sign-off before any external repaint.
A written quote worth trusting should specify the paint brand and product line (Jotun, National Paints, and Caparol dominate the UAE market and are all perfectly good choices for interiors; Jotun's Jotashield range is the standard for villa exteriors because of its UV and weather resistance), the number of coats, whether ceilings and skirting are included, and whether minor crack filling and sanding are part of the price or billed separately. It should also state who covers furniture and flooring protection — a job without dust sheets on marble or timber flooring is asking for trouble — and the payment schedule. Standard practice is 30 to 50 percent upfront with the balance on completion; a contractor demanding full payment before starting is worth a second thought.
The most common failure isn't bad paint, it's bad preparation. Painting a fresh coat over an existing glossy finish without sanding it first causes peeling within weeks, particularly noticeable on doors and skirting. In older buildings around Deira, Karama, and parts of Al Barsha, painters sometimes cover damp patches without addressing the underlying water ingress — the stain reappears through the new paint within a month or two, and by then the contractor has usually moved on to the next job. Bathrooms and kitchens need a mould-resistant or washable emulsion rather than standard matt paint; using the wrong product in these rooms is a false economy that shows up as bubbling paint within a single humid summer.
Before signing off on any job, walk the property in daylight rather than under the crew's work lights — colour and coverage look different, and it's much easier to flag a thin patch or missed corner while the ladders are still there than a week after the crew has packed up.
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