Interior design in Sharjah

An interior design company in Sharjah works under different rules from its Dubai neighbours. For a home, Sharjah City Municipality draws one line: work that renovates or refreshes the interior runs on a maintenance permit, and a design that changes the structure or the layout needs engineering drawings and a building permit, which only an accredited consultancy can file. No fee table is published for either route, which is why a Sharjah design quote carries the permit as a separate line.

Two routes for home interior work

Sharjah publishes no fee table and no processing time in days for any of these. For modification and expansion projects, the Municipality says its own engineers calculate the fees, and any fines, application by application, then send the payment link to the consultant. The deposit behind a permit is real, with one service to pay it and another to recover it, but no page states the amount.

What does the Sharjah maintenance permit involve?

1. Settle the scope in writing first. The Municipality publishes no list of interior works that need no permit, so the contractor states whether your design needs one.
2. The permit sits with the Municipality's Inspection and Follow-up Section rather than in its online e-services catalogue, and the published pages name no applicant, document list or fee.
3. A refundable deposit is paid on the permit. No page states the amount, so ask for it as a line in the quote.
4. When the work is finished, the deposit refund service returns it once the site has been cleaned, provided any contractor named on the receipt has no outstanding violations.

Because the refund depends on the contractor's record, check that record before you sign. Sharjah Municipality classifies contractors in numbered categories and issues the classification certificate the Sharjah Economic Development Department needs before it licenses them. It also publishes lookups for contractor and consultant violations, and an open violation blocks a contractor's permits as well as its deposit refunds.

Send us the rooms and scope

When does a Sharjah design need a consultant?

When the design changes the structure or the layout, for example by moving a wall. The drawings then go through the Municipality's approval of engineering drawings service and on to a building permit, and only an engineering consultancy accredited by Sharjah Municipality can file them; the consultant signs for full responsibility. The consultant also commits to showing the owner the Municipality's standard contract form and to handing over every supplier's material guarantees. The forms published with the drawing service include a structural safety declaration for an existing building.

Usufruct, ownership and who signs

The UAE government portal states that foreign nationals in Sharjah hold a usufruct right of up to 100 years rather than ownership, in areas the Government of Sharjah designates and with the Ruler's special approval, under Executive Council Resolution No. 26 of 2014. One developer, Alef Group, advertises freehold for all nationalities at Hayyan, and no authority source reconciles the two, so read your own title deed or usufruct contract before commissioning work.

Sharjah developers publish no interior rules

No Sharjah master developer publishes a homeowner alteration or fit-out NOC. That holds for Arada at Aljada, Masaar and Nasma Residences; for Alef Group, whose resident app offers payments and visitor approval but no work permit; for Majid Al Futtaim at Al Zahia, whose governance page is empty; for Sharjah Sustainable City; and for Eagle Hills at Maryam Island. Tilal City's 2021 guidelines, the one published design code, govern the outside of new buildings: no black, fluorescent or intense primary colours, and mashrabiya or sunshades on the façade. Inside the home, the Municipality's rules are the whole picture.

Two communities stand out for interior work. Nasma Residences, Arada's oldest fully delivered community, has 1,117 homes, from two-bedroom townhouses to five-bedroom villas, every type sold. At Al Zahia, the Orchid neighbourhood sells plots of 5,000 to 12,000 square feet for four- to eight-bedroom homes that owners commission themselves, and Camelia sells plots of 3,000 to 9,000 square feet for four to six bedrooms.

What does an interior design company in Sharjah charge?

None of the firms on our fee page publishes a Sharjah band yet, so prices are confirmed per emirate from the proposals themselves. Until then the Sharjah price guide works from the Dubai figures: design alone at 10 to 20 percent of the project value, a studio package from AED 10,000, and design and build for part of a villa from AED 80,000. Custom furniture and joinery are quoted the same way, against a drawing and a material schedule.

Ajman, next door, prints the fee and the duration for almost every building service, which makes a useful contrast when you budget; see the Ajman permits. The interior design firms we brief quote on one written scope in either emirate.