Decorator, interior designer or design-and-build: which to hire in Dubai

Part two · HDi answers

The straight answer

Hire a decorator when the layout stays and you are changing colour, furniture, curtains and art. Hire an independent interior designer when you want a full drawing package to tender to several contractors and you are ready to manage the gap between design and build. Hire a design-and-build company when anything is being built, such as a kitchen, joinery, bathrooms, walls or ceilings, and you want one company answering for the design, the price and the result. For a renovation like yours, where joinery, bathrooms and MEP are most of the money, design-and-build is the safer choice, because the people drawing it are the people pricing it.

Whichever you choose, the contract has to name the deliverables, the number of revisions, a design that is checked against your budget before it is finished, and who owns the drawings. You had none of those four in writing, and that, rather than the designer's talent, is why you are where you are.

Three different purchases

The decorator

Works with the rooms as they are: paint, wallpaper, furniture, lighting you can plug in, curtains, rugs, art and styling. Nothing is built and nothing needs approval. If your house works and simply feels flat, this is the cheapest way to change how it feels.

The independent interior designer

Changes the space: layouts, joinery, lighting design, materials, and a drawing package a contractor can price and build from. The strength is independence. A good one has no stake in the build and argues your corner with whichever contractor wins the tender. The weakness is the gap between the two contracts. The designer is not responsible for the build price, and the contractor is not responsible for the design.

The design-and-build company

Designs, prices, gets the approvals and builds under one contract. The design is drawn by people who know what each line costs, so it is priced as it is drawn rather than tendered at the end. The trade-off is independence: you are trusting one company's judgement on both sides. The protection is transparency, meaning an itemised quotation you can compare against anyone else's.

What design costs in Dubai

Fees are quoted in four ways, and published 2026 guides for Dubai give these ranges:

The per-square-foot figures in particular vary so much between sources that they are only comparable when you hold the deliverables list next to them. One 2026 guide quotes design-only fees from AED 175 a square foot, then gives two worked examples of real projects at about AED 75. Your AED 60,000 was about 13 per cent of your budget. That is inside the normal band for the percentage method, but it was for a package that stopped well short of what a contractor needs.

Two fee structures deserve a question before you sign. A percentage of the build cost rises as the budget rises, which works against the person asking for it to come down. And procurement margins or trade discounts on furniture and finishes are normal, but they should be disclosed, with the supplier invoices shown.

What a design fee has to buy

This is the list that would have saved you four months. A design package a contractor can price and build from includes:

1. A measured survey of the property as it stands.
2. The space plan, with furniture and circulation checked.
3. Elevations of every wall carrying joinery, tiling or a feature.
4. A reflected ceiling plan: ceiling levels, bulkheads, lighting positions and access panels.
5. Electrical and data layout: sockets, switches, the TV wall, appliance points.
6. Plumbing positions for every kitchen and bathroom fixture.
7. Joinery drawings with internal layouts, door range, finishes and hardware.
8. A finishes schedule naming every material in every room.
9. A sanitaryware and appliance schedule with model numbers.
10. Visuals of the key rooms.
11. A cost check against your budget before the design is signed off.
12. Drawings for approval, by a consultant registered with your authority, where the scope needs a permit.

Your package was items two and ten. Mood boards and renders are the part that sells the design. Items three to nine are the part that gets it built. Ask for the list in the appointment letter, ticked, with dates.

Why a design comes in 50 per cent over budget

It is rarely bad faith. It is usually a process with no cost check in it.

• Nobody priced it while it was being drawn. Every finish, every metre of joinery and every light fitting was chosen on appearance alone. The total only appears when the tender comes back.
• The renders show more than the brief. Fluted panels, stone cladding, a bulkhead with cove lighting in every room. Each one is lovely and each is a line on a quotation.
• Joinery is underestimated. Built-in wardrobes, a kitchen and feature walls in a townhouse are a large share of the money, and a render does not show how many linear metres it contains.
• MEP is invisible until it is drawn. Moving a kitchen or opening a wall moves cables, drains and air conditioning.
• Approvals are left out of the budget, and so is the contractor's protection, debris removal and the community deposit.

The fix is the same in either model: a cost estimate at concept stage, a second at detailed design, and a rule that the design is not finished until it fits the budget. The design-and-build model has that built in, because the estimator sits next to the designer. With an independent designer you have to write it into the appointment.

Who owns the drawings

In most design appointments the designer keeps the copyright and you receive a licence to use the drawings for your property. That is normal. What matters is what the licence lets you do, and it has to be settled in writing before you pay anything:

• Can you use the drawings with any contractor, or only with the designer's?
• Do you receive the editable drawing files, or only PDFs?
• Can another designer or contractor develop them if the original designer leaves the project?
• What happens to the licence if you part company halfway through?

If the appointment letter is silent, you are negotiating from a weak position now, as you have found. Ask, politely and in writing, for a licence to use the drawings for your property with a contractor of your choice, with the editable files, in return for the fee you have paid. Many designers will agree when asked plainly. If yours will not, a design-and-build company can resurvey and redraw. That costs time, but less than building a design nobody can price.

Reading a portfolio

• Renders or photographs? A render shows taste. A photograph shows what was built. Ask how many of the portfolio images are real finished rooms.
• The joins. Look where a worktop meets a wall, a skirting meets a door frame, a floor finish changes. Design competence shows at the junctions.
• Before and after. Harder to fake, and far more useful than a styled finished room.
• Budgets. Ask what three portfolio projects cost to build, and how close each came to the original budget.
• References. Speak to a client whose project went to a contractor the designer did not choose.

Questions to ask before you appoint anyone

1. What exactly will I receive, and at which stage? Can I have the list in writing?
2. How many rounds of revisions are included before extra fees apply?
3. When and how will the design be checked against my budget?
4. Who handles approvals, and is that person registered with my authority?
5. Can I take the drawings to any contractor, and will I get the editable files?
6. Do you earn commission or trade discount from suppliers or contractors, and will you show me the invoices?
7. Who will actually draw my project: you, or someone else in the studio?
8. How often will you be on site during the build, and is that in the fee?

Your questions, answered one by one

Should we have hired a decorator?

No. You are moving a kitchen, building joinery and rebuilding bathrooms. A decorator does not do that.

Was a designer the wrong choice?

Not necessarily. The appointment was the problem: no deliverables list, no cost check, nothing on the drawings. An independent designer with those three in writing would have served you well.

What do we do now?

Ask for the drawing licence in writing. Then take the renders, the layout and your budget to a design-and-build company and ask for a measured survey, an itemised price for the design as drawn, and a version that fits AED 450,000. You will see exactly which choices are costing the extra AED 240,000, and decide which to keep.

Is AED 60,000 wasted?

Not if the layout and the look are right. Those are the hard creative decisions, and a good design-and-build team will build on them rather than start again.

Will design-and-build give us a contractor's taste?

Only if the company has no designers. Ask to see the design team, their own completed work, and the 3D presentation before you commit.

How HDi works

We are design-and-build. Designers, joiners, sprayers, fitters and our own MEP crew, more than 80 people, all work for us from one building in Dubai Production City. The company was established in Cape Town in 1992 and has worked in Dubai since 2010.

It starts with the initial design consultation, AED 5,000, credited in full against your project when you approve it. We take your brief, go through the problems with your current space, and talk about ideas and budget with real doors, finishes and worktops on the table. We then survey your home and design a solution to every point on the brief, presented in 3D, so changes are made on screen rather than on site. The itemised quotation follows the agreed design: every cabinet, finish, appliance and trade, so you can see what each decision costs and compare it with anybody else's figures.

Then our team produces the factory shop drawings and prepares the paperwork for community and authority approvals. Because our joinery is made in our own factory, the drawings you approve are the ones the factory cuts from, and there is no second interpretation between the design and what arrives at your house. Our sixteen signature door ranges come in sixty-eight standard finishes and any RAL colour on painted doors, so the kitchen, the wardrobes and the vanities can match.

Holding a design you cannot get built, or starting from scratch? Book a consultation or call 050 578 1086. Bring the renders, the layout and the budget, and we will tell you at the first meeting what it will cost to build and which choices are driving the price.