Interior design licence vs fit-out licence

The two answer different questions. An interior design licence lets a firm sell design: drawings, specifications and advice. A fit-out licence lets it build what was drawn, and that registration is what the authority checks before work starts on site. So the interior design licence vs fit-out licence question comes down to who may work on your walls, floors and ceilings, and who may only draw them.

Which fit-out licence does Dubai recognise?

Dubai licenses in two steps: a trade licence from the Department of Economy and Tourism, the former DED, then a place on Dubai Municipality's register of consultants and contractors. The register's classification, dated 14 February 2024 and issued by the committee that licenses engineering consultancy and contracting, sorts every activity into main and secondary. These are the ones an interior job meets:

Read the second row closely. Decoration Design and Implementation carries both halves in its name: designing the décor and carrying it out. What no secondary activity reaches is the structure: that stays with Building Contracting, graded from the Fourth category, cleared for ground plus one, to the First, with no height limit. The hub's licence check guide sets out every grade.

When may a designer not build?

Whenever the designer is not the accredited contractor. Dubai Municipality's Circular 3-8-1 of 2021 lifts the building permit for décor in units of up to 100 square metres only on condition that a Municipality-accredited contractor executes it, and Circular 3-12-1 of 2022 attaches the same condition to painting, floors, doors and suspended ceilings. A studio holding a design licence and no contractor accreditation can draw the room; a registered contractor has to build it.

Structure moves the line again. A wall taken out, an opening cut or area added makes the job a modifications transaction, filed by a registered consultant, and the builder then needs Building Contracting. A design studio that is itself a registered engineering consultancy can file; one that is not brings a consultant in. The Municipality recognises four kinds of consulting office: local, joint, consulting and branches of foreign offices.

Firms that hold both halves sell them together, and publish prices that way. Pine Tree Lane lists design and basic scope for a studio at AED 10,000 to 25,000, and Spazio design and build for part of a villa from AED 80,000. Whether one contract or two suits your project is set out in the two routes compared side by side.

Ask us to check a firm's licence

Abu Dhabi: registered, graded or both?

Abu Dhabi draws the same line through the Department of Municipalities and Transport, with codes of its own. The activity its permit system accepts for decoration is Implementation Of Interior Design - Decoration Works (4330015), held by an engineering contracting company; it must be registered but carries no classification grade. Building Contracting (4100002) must be registered and graded. The design side files the building permit for internal modifications, and only an engineering consultancy registered and classified for Architectural Engineering Consultancy (7110202) may do so.

Every permit also checks a live commercial licence. DMT's classification procedures carry no fees, and firms in the fifth and sixth contractor categories are classified at once, since those grades need no project history. Higher grades are earned on the value of work already completed, and the public list adds a one-to-five-star evaluation beside each firm's category.

Sharjah and Ajman

Sharjah runs the steps in reverse order. The Municipality grades a contracting firm first, in numbered categories, and the Sharjah Economic Development Department licenses it afterwards on the strength of that grade. Violation records for contractors and for consultants are searchable online, and drawings that change structure or layout can only be filed by a consultancy the Municipality accredits. The exact activity name the economic department expects of a fit-out contractor is not published, so ask for the classification certificate itself.

Ajman accredits contractors and consultants through a professional practice accreditation, AED 200 and two days, and grades them, with a category upgrade at the same fee; the categories themselves are not published. Its one approval with interior design in the title, AED 100 and one day, covers plans for food and health premises and is filed by an engineering consultancy. A home runs on the maintenance permit instead, which an owner can apply for directly.

What to ask a firm for

1. The trade licence, with its activity list, from the economy department of the emirate where the work is.
2. In Dubai, the firm's entry on the Municipality's register, searchable in the Dubai BPS app, and the activity recorded on it.
3. In Abu Dhabi, the firm record and classification in DMT's system, and its line on the public list of classified firms.
4. Who files each approval: the contractor for décor and maintenance, a consultant for anything structural.
5. If one firm designs and builds, both halves on its own registration, or a named partner for the half it lacks.

We run those checks before a brief leaves us, so the firms we shortlist quote only for work their registration covers.