Interior design in Abu Dhabi

Hiring an interior design company in Abu Dhabi starts with a question the Department of Municipalities and Transport answers in its own words: does the design change the interior spaces? The answer to that one question decides whether the contractor files a maintenance permit in 7 working days or a consultant files a building permit in 10.

Maintenance permit or building permit

DMT defines the Maintenance Permit as covering maintenance work, improvements or decor, provided the work does not modify or change the interior spaces, create openings in the existing building or affect its structural safety. The Building Permit covers, among new builds and extensions, building internal or external modifications without additions. A moved partition or a widened opening therefore takes a design from the first permit to the second.

On 29 August 2025 DMT announced that contractors can secure approvals directly for minor works on villas, farmhouses and holiday homes. Its list of minor works includes non-structural interior or exterior modifications, general maintenance and interior finishes, alongside extensions of up to 25 square metres.

Who files, and which licence the firm needs

The homeowner files neither permit. Tasareeh, the Aldar company that reviews permits in partnership with DMT, publishes the full document list for a maintenance permit: a contractor assignment letter from the owner, the site plan, the owner's ID, a health and safety plan, a commercial licence carrying the right activity and architectural drawings. Two further items come from Tadweer, Abu Dhabi's waste management centre: a contract with a Tadweer-approved waste transporter and a waste management plan on Tadweer's template. The service card splits its 7 working days into 2 for review and 5 for inspection. For the plots in its scope, which are not all of Abu Dhabi, Tasareeh's published fee schedule puts a building maintenance permit at AED 2,000 and a villa modification, from registration and design review to the work start notice and structural inspection, at about AED 5,900.

The contractor must be registered in DMT's Municipal Electronic Classification System. On the maintenance route, DMT's rules check a firm record and a live commercial licence rather than a classification grade. For shop décor permits the activity DMT accepts is Implementation Of Interior Design - Decoration Works, which must be registered but needs no grade, while Building Contracting must be registered and graded. DMT grades firms in seven categories, Special and then First to Sixth, by the value of their past projects.

Tell us what the design changes

Aldar communities, towers and working hours

Fifteen Aldar community handbooks carry the same clause: owners and occupiers may not carry out alterations, additions or renovations, or install fittings and fixtures that deviate from approved plans, without prior written approval from the Owners Union Director. Starting without Review Committee approval stops the project with a AED 10,000 fine, plus AED 400 to 4,000 for each further 30 days until an application arrives. No fee, turnaround or deposit amount is published for the Owners Union approval itself, unlike the Tasareeh permit fees above. The Al Raha Beach master declaration, a 2007 document, defines the improvements that need consent to include permanent decorations, so permanent decorative work needs consent too.

Working hours are set community by community. Noisy work must stop by 8:00 PM in Al Raha Gardens, Yas Acres, Mamsha, Al Ghadeer and The Bridges, and by 6:00 PM at Saadiyat Beach Villas and Residences. The Bridges 2 on Al Reem stops works at 6:00 PM but allows moves until 8:00 PM. For furniture, the handbooks ask 48 hours' notice for bulk deliveries, cap a lift booking at two hours and limit mover vehicles to 1.2 metres in height.

Check the title before commissioning design work that changes the fabric. Abu Dhabi's Law No. 19 of 2005 describes usufruct as using a property without being able to change it, while musataha carries use, construction or alteration. The UAE government portal lists nine areas where foreigners may own: Yas Island, Saadiyat, Reem, Mariya, Lulu, Al Raha Beach, Sayh Al Sedairah, Al Reef and Masdar City. Al Reem Island has sat inside ADGM since 24 April 2023, so a unit alteration there needs consent under ADGM's strata title regulations and from the tower's Owners Union, while the building permit stays with the municipality.

How big can a majlis be in Abu Dhabi?

Abu Dhabi's Capital Development Code, issued by DMT in September 2022, allows a detached majlis and service block of up to 6 metres, ground floor only, in the villa residential district. Plots under 350 square metres are exempt from those rules, and where the separate private villa design provisions conflict with the code, those provisions prevail. Area rules can be tighter. Abu Dhabi City Municipality's 2025 rules for Al Falah keep a new majlis inside the plot in area B3, cap it at 6 metres, require it to match the villa's style, materials and colours, and make its doors and windows open inward where it stands on the boundary.

What are the best interior design companies in Abu Dhabi?

We do not publish a ranking, and DMT offers a better tool than one. Its public list of engineering firms with a valid classification, 5,232 entries, shows each firm's category, its expiry date and an evaluation of one to five stars. Check that a contractor is registered in the classification system before it files a maintenance permit, and that a consultancy is classified before it files a building permit for your layout. We put the same written scope to firms that pass both checks and compare their proposals line by line.

What do interior design firms in Abu Dhabi charge?

None of the firms on our fee page publishes a separate Abu Dhabi band yet, so quotes here are confirmed per emirate from the proposals themselves. Until they are, we work from the Dubai bands behind our Abu Dhabi prices: 10 to 20 percent of the project value for design alone, a studio package from AED 10,000, and design and build for part of a villa from AED 80,000.

Dubai draws its line in a different place. There, décor in a unit of up to 100 square metres needs no building permit at all, as the Dubai permits page shows. Whichever emirate the home is in, the interior designers we brief quote on one written scope.