Painting services in Dubai

The table sets out four common painting jobs, and each one has a different person to ask first. An apartment repaint answers to building management. A villa interior answers to the community, although several communities exempt it. A villa exterior is where community rules bite hardest, and a move-out repaint is governed by the lease and the tenancy law before it is governed by taste.

Paint is often one line of a bigger job. When new gypsum ceilings, cove lighting or flooring go in at the same time, the painting belongs inside an interior renovation, because the ceiling has to be finished, and its cables run, before the final coats go on.

Dubai Renovations does not publish a painting price. This site shows a price only when a named publisher gives it for the same kind of job, and no source we could check met that bar for painting. What we can set out is what moves the number, so that two quotes can be compared on the same footing.

Area comes first, and it is wall and ceiling area, not the floor area on the title deed. Next is the system: Jotun's data sheets specify one coat of primer and two topcoats for both products cited on this page, so a quote with fewer coats is cheaper for a reason. After that come repairs, access and VAT, which the UAE has charged at a standard rate of 5% since 1 January 2018.

• Measured wall and ceiling area, room by room, less doors and windows
• Primer and the number of topcoats, against the maker's recommended system
• Surface repair: crack filling, sanding, and stain or damp treatment
• Access: scaffold towers for double-height halls, and scaffold or lifts for an exterior
• Protection and moving of furniture, and covering floors and fittings
• The product itself, its sheen, and whether it is a standard or a specialist coating
• Whether 5% VAT is inside the total or added on the invoice

First decide which 1,000 sq ft you mean. Painters price the surface they cover, and a room has far more wall and ceiling than floor. Take a 4 m by 5 m bedroom at 2.7 m, the Dubai Building Code's minimum clear height for bedrooms. It has 20 m² of floor, but 48.6 m² of wall and another 20 m² of ceiling: 68.6 m² to paint before doors and windows come off, more than three times the floor figure.

If the 1,000 sq ft really is paintable surface, about 93 m², the data sheets give the paint quantity. Jotun rates Fenomastic Projects Silk, an interior emulsion, at 5 to 10 m² per litre per coat, so two coats take roughly 19 to 37 litres. For its exterior Jotashield ColourLast Silk the rate is 7.6 to 10.8 m² per litre, so two coats take about 17 to 24 litres. Primer is on top, and both sheets say the real rate depends on porosity, texture, film thickness and wastage.

So the useful question for a partner is not a price per square foot of flat. Ask for the measured paintable area on the quote, and the litres of each product it assumes.

The tin price is the wrong number to compare. A cheaper paint that covers fewer square metres per litre needs more litres, and possibly an extra coat, so compare cost per square metre covered instead: divide the tin price by its litres, then by the spreading rate on its data sheet. Jotun's own sheet lists ColourLast Silk in 1 litre, 4 litre and 18 litre tins, so the per-litre figure is the one to line up.

Batches matter on a large wall. Jotun's exterior sheet says contents with different batch numbers must be mixed together before use, which is how a painter avoids a visible change of shade halfway along a facade. Ask whether the quote includes the paint or only the labour, and if you are supplying it, buy the whole quantity at once.

Dubai Renovations does not publish wages. The painters on a job are employed by the partner contractor, and their pay is a matter between them and that employer. What you pay is the contractor's price, and labour is one part of it alongside paint, access equipment, protection materials and VAT.

What you can check is how the labour is priced. Some quotes are per square metre of measured surface, some per room, some a lump sum for the job. A measured quote is the easiest to compare and to adjust if you add a room. On outdoor work, the UAE midday break stops work under direct sunlight in open places between 12:30 pm and 3 pm from 15 June to 15 September, which shortens a painter's outdoor day in summer and stretches an exterior programme.

The paint maker sets the weather limits, and in Dubai the one that bites is the dew point, not the cold. Jotun's data sheet for Jotashield ColourLast Silk, an exterior acrylic sold in the UAE, says the wall itself must be at least 10 °C and at least 3 °C above the dew point of the air, measured close to the wall. After a humid night a facade can sit at or below the dew point until the sun warms it, and paint laid over that film of moisture is paint laid over water.

Heat mostly moves the timetable. The same sheet puts the minimum time before the next coat at 12 hours on a 10 °C wall, 6 hours at 23 °C and 2 hours at 40 °C, measured at 50% relative humidity. A hot wall can take a second coat the same afternoon; a cool, humid one cannot.

Summer adds the midday break: no work under direct sunlight in open places from 12:30 pm to 3 pm, 15 June to 15 September. A partner planning a summer exterior works around the sun, painting the shaded elevations in the middle of the day and the sunny ones early and late, once the dew has lifted.

• Ask how the painter checks the dew point before starting a humid morning
• Ask which elevation is painted at which time of day in summer
• Ask for the recoat interval the programme assumes, and check it against the sheet
• Ask what primer goes under the topcoat, and whether cracks are filled with the maker's own filler

Inside a villa, painting can need no NOC at all. Emaar Community Management's Arabian Ranches guidance lists interior painting with AC cleaning and small repairs as work that needs no NOC, although the contractor still needs an entry permit to work in the community.

Outside, a colour change is a different question. In Emirates Living and Arabian Ranches, Emaar Community Management says changes to the exterior of the villa are not permitted, and the Dubai Hills Estate guidelines prohibit alterations to the exterior of a unit, including doors, windows and window coverings. Before choosing a new facade colour, put it to the community; the partner contractor can prepare the application, but the answer is the community's. The villa renovation page lists each community's published route.

Colour also carries a heat rule. Part K of the Dubai Building Code sets a minimum solar reflectance index of 29 for villa external walls, on a scale where a standard black is 0 and a standard white is 100. Jotun's sheet for ColourLast Silk says selected colours reach an SRI of at least 29, which means not every colour in the range does. If a darker facade colour is on the table, ask for that colour's figure.

Inside the unit, walls and ceilings are yours to repaint, subject to building management's renovation rules and its NOC. The limits start at the front door. Emaar Community Management's guidelines for Dubai Marina and Downtown Dubai prohibit alterations, additions and decorations to the unit exterior or the common areas, including doors, windows and window coverings, so the corridor side of your front door and the balcony walls seen from outside are not yours to recolour.

The law behind that is Article 39 of Dubai Law No. 6 of 2019, which requires approval from the master developer, the Dubai Land Department and the competent authority before an occupant makes substantial changes to the external appearance of a unit. The apartment renovation page sets out what Dubai Marina, Downtown Dubai, Business Bay, JVC and JLT each publish.

The practical limits are the ones building management runs day to day: permitted working hours, a booked service lift for ladders and paint, and protection of the corridor. Say in your enquiry whether the flat is empty or furnished, because moving and covering furniture is a line of its own.

Dubai's tenancy law does not say every tenant must repaint. Article 21 of Law No. 26 of 2007 says a tenant hands the property back in the same condition in which it was received at the start of the lease, except for ordinary wear and tear and damage due to reasons beyond the tenant's control. Whether a repaint is owed turns on how the walls looked at check-in, how they look now, and what the lease says.

The lease matters because Article 19 keeps a tenant's obligation to carry out the restorations that have been agreed or that are customary for tenants. A repainting clause in the contract is an agreed restoration. Article 20 lets the landlord take a security deposit to ensure maintenance of the property at the end of the lease, and requires the deposit or its remainder to be refunded. If the two sides disagree, Article 21 sends the question to the Special Tribunal for the Settlement of Disputes between Landlords and Tenants.

A tenant who painted a feature wall during the lease needed the landlord's permission under Article 19, and may be asked to return the wall to the original colour. A landlord repainting between tenants is commissioning an ordinary repaint, in a flat that is normally empty and so easy to protect and move through.

• Find the check-in report or photos before booking anything
• Read the lease for a repainting or restoration clause
• Book the repaint to finish before the handover inspection, not on the day
• Keep the painter's invoice with your move-out paperwork

The Dubai Building Code regulates what goes into the tin. For villas, Part K says paints, coatings, adhesives and sealants must not exceed the volatile organic compound (VOC) limits set by the Dubai Central Laboratory, and must be accredited or certified by that laboratory or another the authority approves. Part H applies the same rule to air-conditioned buildings generally, and Part K also bars paints containing lead or other heavy metals above Dubai Municipality's limits.

Jotun's data sheets list a theoretical VOC of 0 g/l under ISO 11890 for both products cited on this page, and note that a tested value will vary. Ask the partner which product the quote names and whether its certification is in hand. If the quote names no product, get one named before you compare it with anything.

The first page of results for this search is marketplaces, listings and social profiles, with a price guide in Google's AI answer. None of them sets out what a price buys. A quote you can hold a painting contractor to names each of these, or says plainly that it is excluded:

• Each room or elevation, with its measured area
• The product name, the sheen, and the colour codes, with a test patch before the full coat
• Primer and topcoat count, matching the maker's recommended system
• Surface preparation: which cracks are filled, what is sanded, how damp patches are treated
• Protection of floors, fittings and furniture, and who moves the furniture
• Access equipment, and the working hours the building or community allows
• Cleaning, debris removal and a touch-up visit after handover
• Whether 5% UAE VAT is included

On a renovation, paint goes on near the end. The home renovation page lists the order the trades run in: first fix, plastering and gypsum ceilings, tiling, joinery, then painting, then switches, lights and taps. Settle the electrical plan before the final coats go on, or the new walls get cut open again for a socket nobody planned.

A partner contractor can plan the visit from these details:

• Villa, townhouse or apartment, and the community or building
• Which rooms or elevations, with a photo of each
• Current colours, the colours you want, and the finish
• Cracks, damp patches or flaking you already know about
• Whether the home is empty or furnished, and whether you own it or rent it
• For a move-out repaint, the handover date and the check-in photos