Part one · The client asks
"One friend spent 400,000. Another spent 1.8 million. Their villas are the same size."
We have just bought a four-bedroom villa in Jumeirah Park, about 4,000 square feet, built in 2009. Structurally it is fine, but nothing has been touched since handover: the original kitchen, four tired bathrooms and a powder room, dated floor tiles downstairs, wardrobes with doors that no longer close, air-conditioning units that are on their last summer and lighting that makes the whole house feel dim.
We are not moving walls. We want a proper kitchen, all the bathrooms redone, a new floor downstairs, wardrobes in every bedroom, new air conditioning, better lighting and paint throughout. Good quality, built to last, nothing silly.
The trouble is the numbers. Online, we have seen renovation costs from AED 75 to AED 800 per square foot, which for our house is anything from AED 300,000 to more than AED 3 million. That is not a range, it is a shrug. One friend renovated a villa our size for AED 400,000. Another spent AED 1.8 million on hers and says she would do it again. A contractor who came round said "it depends", which is true but not helpful.
We need a number we can plan around, because we are deciding how much of our savings to put in and whether to borrow the rest.
So: what will a renovation like ours actually cost? What is a realistic figure per square foot in 2026? Why are our friends' numbers so far apart? How much should we hold back for surprises? And what costs are we going to forget?
Part two · HDi answers
The straight answer
For a properly made renovation in Dubai in 2026, plan on roughly AED 150 to 275 per square foot for a good mid-range refit where nothing structural moves, AED 275 to 450 for a high-end one, and more above that for full luxury; for your 4,000 square foot villa and the scope you describe, that is about AED 600,000 to 1.1 million, plus 10 to 15 per cent contingency. As fixed points from our own pricing, a bespoke kitchen made in our factory starts from AED 40,000, a fully rebuilt master bathroom is around AED 68,000 before sanitaryware, and a full custom six-bedroom villa including approvals, joinery and construction starts from AED 1.5 million.
Your friends' villas are the same size, but their jobs were not. AED 400,000 on 4,000 square feet is AED 100 per square foot, which buys a cosmetic refresh. AED 1.8 million is AED 450, which buys a luxury renovation with layout changes, stone and bespoke joinery in every room. Both can be good value. The rest of this guide shows where the money goes, so you can place your own job on that scale.
What the market charges per square foot
Two published 2026 surveys of Dubai renovation costs put the bands like this. They disagree at the edges, so both are shown.
| Level | Survey A, June 2026 | Survey B, March 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Economy or basic refresh | AED 75 - 150 per square foot | AED 120 - 250 |
| Mid-range | AED 150 - 275 | AED 250 - 450 |
| Luxury | AED 275 - 400 and up | AED 450 and up |
| Ultra-luxury | AED 400 - 800 and up | not given |
Survey A also prices a four-bedroom villa of about 4,000 square feet directly: AED 300,000 to 600,000 at economy level, AED 600,000 to 1.1 million at mid-range, AED 1.1 to 1.6 million at luxury and from AED 1.6 million for ultra-luxury, before any pool or landscaping. Your brief, with every bathroom, the kitchen, wardrobes and the air conditioning done properly, sits in the mid-range band.
Per square foot figures are a sanity check, not a price. They cannot tell a villa with five bathrooms from one with three, or a kitchen with a stone island from one without. That is why every serious price starts with a site measure.
What the parts cost
These are the fixed points: our own guide prices where we have them, and published market figures where we do not.
| Item | Guide price |
|---|---|
| Bespoke kitchen, made in our own factory (HDi) | from AED 40,000 |
| Bespoke kitchen, premium ranges and finishes (HDi) | up to AED 140,000 |
| Master bathroom stripped and rebuilt, sanitaryware excluded (HDi) | around AED 68,000 |
| Standard family bathroom refit (market, 2026) | AED 25,000 - 45,000 each |
| Fitted wardrobes, hinged, 2.7 m high, per linear metre (HDi) | AED 3,650 - 3,850 |
| Walk-in dressing room with glass doors, per linear metre (HDi) | around AED 6,750 |
| Porcelain floor tile, supply only, per square metre (market) | AED 60 - 180, laying from about AED 50 |
| Authority approvals and NOC work (HDi) | AED 5,000 - 22,500 |
| Whole-villa joinery package, every room (HDi) | around AED 440,000 |
| Apartment renovation (HDi) | from AED 200,000 |
| Full custom six-bedroom villa, approvals, joinery and construction (HDi) | from AED 1.5 million |
| Initial design consultation, credited in full against an approved project (HDi) | AED 5,000 |
The wardrobe rate is not an estimate. It is six hinged wardrobes from one of our own signed quotations, runs of 1,725, 1,970, 2,322, 1,078, 2,000 and 1,590 mm, which price out between AED 3,652 and 3,857 per linear metre. A typical 2 m bedroom run is therefore about AED 7,300.
The bathroom figure is one real master bathroom taken back and rebuilt: tanking, tiling, a moisture-resistant ceiling, the plumbing and electrics, a linear shower drain, an illuminated mirror and three pieces of vanity joinery. Sanitaryware supply is not in it; that client bought their own. A family bathroom sits well below it.
Your villa, roughly priced
Here is your brief built up from those parts. It is a guide to the shape of the budget, not a quotation.
| Element | Guide, AED |
|---|---|
| Bespoke kitchen | 60,000 - 140,000 |
| Master bathroom, rebuilt, before sanitaryware | around 68,000 |
| Three further bathrooms and the powder room | 90,000 - 160,000 |
| Fitted wardrobes, about 11 linear metres across four bedrooms | 40,000 - 43,000 |
| Approvals and NOC work | 5,000 - 22,500 |
| Floors, air conditioning, electrics and lighting, ceilings, paint, preliminaries | the balance, typically 340,000 - 670,000 |
| Build total | about 600,000 - 1,100,000 |
| Contingency at 10 - 15% | 60,000 - 165,000 |
The two choices that move your number most are the kitchen and the air conditioning. A premium kitchen with a stone island sits at the top of its range. New air-conditioning units, ducting and controls through a whole villa are a large line, and they have risen faster than almost anything else: industry data for 2026 puts air-conditioning works more than 40 per cent above their 2021 level, and Dubai's overall construction cost index was up about 5 per cent year on year in the first quarter. A budget built from a 2023 renovation is out of date.
Roughly where the money goes
On a typical fit-out with no structural work, the shape is usually something like this. Use it to sanity-check any quotation.
| Element | Share of the build cost |
|---|---|
| Joinery: kitchen, wardrobes, vanities, feature walls | 25 - 40% |
| Electrical, plumbing and air conditioning | 12 - 20% |
| Flooring, tiling and stone | 10 - 18% |
| Ceilings, partitions and painting | 8 - 15% |
| Bathrooms, excluding the tiling | 8 - 15% |
| Demolition and making good | 3 - 8% |
| Preliminaries, approvals and project management | 8 - 15% |
If a quotation puts joinery at four per cent of the total, somebody has priced a different kitchen from the one you described. If preliminaries are missing entirely, they have not been removed; they have been moved somewhere you will meet them later. Why one quotation is 400,000 higher than the other shows how to read a quotation line by line.
The costs that do not scale
A set of approval drawings costs the same whether the job behind it is AED 200,000 or 1.4 million. So do mobilising a site, protecting the finished areas, insuring the works and running a submission. On our own jobs these preliminaries are flat job rates, not percentages. On a large villa they disappear into the total; on a small apartment they are a visible slice of it.
The useful rule that follows: doing one room now and another next year costs more than doing both together, because you pay the fixed costs twice. If the budget only reaches one room, that is still the right decision, but take it knowing the arithmetic.
The contingency is not optional
Hold 10 per cent on a newer property and 15 per cent on anything older. Your villa is from 2009, so plan on the higher end: AED 90,000 to 165,000 on your budget. It is there for what demolition finds, and demolition reliably finds something: an old leak into a screed, wiring that will not take the new load, a waste pipe in the wrong place.
A contingency is not a fund for upgrades. If it is untouched at the end, that is money saved. The most common way it disappears is on nicer taps in week three.
The costs people forget
None of these are the contractor's, and all of them are real:
- VAT at 5 per cent, if a quotation is shown without it
- Community NOC fees and the refundable security deposit, often AED 5,000 to 20,000 for a villa
- Service charges and utilities while the house is empty
- Rent, if it is your home, and moving and storage, twice
- Appliances, unless the quotation names them; check, because it often does not
- Sanitaryware, if it is shown as an allowance or excluded
- Curtains, blinds and loose furniture, which can be a serious figure on their own
- Landscaping or pool work, which is usually priced separately
The fees and deposits are explained in renovation approvals in Dubai.
Where to spend, and where you can genuinely save
Saving money and buying the same thing worse are different. The first is planning; the second comes back as a defect.
Spend here
- Waterproofing, falls and extraction. Buried, invisible, and the only failures that damage somebody else's property.
- What is inside the joinery. Board, hinges and runners. A door can be replaced; the box behind it cannot.
- The electrical layout. Sockets and circuits are cheap at first fix and expensive forever after.
- Anything behind a wall or under a floor. Reaching it later costs far more than doing it well now.
Save here
- Keep bathrooms where they are. Moving a toilet is a drainage job and a permit. Replacing one is a morning.
- Use the expensive material where it is seen. A statement slab on the island and a quieter one on the perimeter is design, not compromise.
- Simplify the ceilings. Complex bulkheads and coves are slow. A calm ceiling with good lighting reads better anyway.
- Phase the loose items. Furniture, curtains and art can arrive over a year without costing more.
- Choose finishes, not fewer cabinets. Storage you did not build is what you will regret; a door finish can change later.
What we would not do: thin the waterproofing, use standard board in a wet area, or give up the contingency. Those three are where a cheap renovation becomes an expensive one.
Paying for it
Pay against stages finished and inspected, not dates on a calendar. A sensible schedule matches each payment to work done or material bought for you, and keeps the last payment big enough to matter at handover. Bespoke joinery normally needs a substantial deposit because the factory buys material for your job; a large deposit for a whole renovation with nothing yet bought is a different thing.
Your questions, answered one by one
What will ours cost?
About AED 600,000 to 1.1 million for the work, plus AED 90,000 to 165,000 contingency, depending mostly on the kitchen, the bathrooms and the air conditioning. A site measure narrows that to a single figure.
What is realistic per square foot?
AED 150 to 275 for a good mid-range refit, AED 275 to 450 for high-end, more for full luxury.
Why are our friends so far apart?
One bought a cosmetic refresh at about AED 100 per square foot, the other a luxury renovation at about AED 450. Same size, different jobs.
How much do we hold back?
15 per cent on a 2009 villa, and do not spend it on upgrades.
What will we forget?
VAT, NOC fees and deposits, appliances, sanitaryware allowances, curtains and furniture, and the cost of living elsewhere while the work is done.
How HDi prices your home
Every project is priced individually after the site measure, never off a brochure range. You receive a clear, itemised quote for the agreed design, every cabinet, finish, appliance and trade, so you know exactly what you are paying for. Before work starts you receive your schedule from our portal, with the key milestones and when each payment falls due.
Because we design, get the approvals, manufacture the joinery in our own Dubai Production City factory and install it with our own team, the joinery, which is the largest single share of most budgets, is priced by the people who make it rather than marked up through a subcontractor. We hold trade licence 1298938, carry Contractor's All Risks insurance including third-party liability on every project, and give a one-year warranty on the fit-out and three to five years on our handmade cabinetry, depending on the finishes chosen.
It starts with the initial design consultation, AED 5,000 and credited in full against your project when you approve it. It covers the site measure, the concept layout and the first 3D visuals, and it turns a range like the one above into a number you can plan around.
- Scope written down, room by room, before anyone prices it
- A per square foot sanity check against the 2026 bands
- Kitchen, bathrooms and air conditioning priced as the big three
- Contingency of 10 to 15 per cent set aside and left alone
- VAT basis checked on every quotation
- Approvals, NOC fees and deposits budgeted
- Appliances and sanitaryware: included, allowance or excluded
- Rent, moving, storage, curtains and furniture listed separately
- Quotation checked for preliminaries and joinery share
- Payment schedule tied to stages finished, with a meaningful final payment
- Rooms done together where you can, so the fixed costs are paid once
Want a number you can plan around rather than a range? Book a consultation or call 050 578 1086, and we will measure your home and give you an itemised price for exactly what you want done.