What you can and cannot change in a Dubai apartment

What is fixed in a tower, and what is not

A tower is one structure with your apartment sitting inside it. The columns, the shear walls around the lift and stair cores, the slab under your feet and the slab over your head are all carrying the whole building, and none of them is yours to cut, thin or move. Most of what is left in a typical apartment is fair game in principle: blockwork and drywall partitions, ceilings, joinery, flooring, sanitaryware, and the light and power layout inside your own unit.

The second fixed thing is the vertical services. Soil stacks, water risers, ventilation ducts and the electrical riser run floor to floor in a shaft that serves every apartment in your stack. That shaft usually hides behind a bathroom or kitchen wall, or inside a boxed corner that looks like a design quirk. Find it before anyone draws a new layout, because its position, more than any other single thing, decides what your apartment can become.

Dubai law is blunt about starting without asking. Article 4 of Local Order No. (3) of 1999 provides that no person may carry out construction works that permanently or temporarily change the features of any property in the emirate without first obtaining a permit from the competent department. Article 28 of the same order allows a fine of up to AED 50,000, doubled on a subsequent violation, and the disconnection of utility services to the site for a period the department sets.

Can the bathroom or the kitchen move?

Drainage decides it, and it decides it before aesthetics get a vote. Waste leaves a WC, shower or basin by gravity, runs at a fall along a short horizontal branch and drops into the stack. Move a WC a long way from that stack and the branch has to fall further across the distance, so either the finished floor of the wet room rises to carry the pipe, or the pipe drops into the ceiling void of the apartment below, which is not your ceiling to use.

• Locate the stack first. It is a shaft shared with every apartment above and below you, not a pipe you own.
• Measure the run. Short moves within the same wet zone are usually workable. Putting a bathroom where a bedroom is now, on the far side of the apartment, rarely survives the drainage check.
• Ask what floor build-up the building allows. Raising a wet room floor is the standard fix, and it is paid for in ceiling height, thresholds and door leaves.
• Treat any coring or cutting of the slab as a structural question for the building's engineer, not a decision for your contractor.

Kitchens carry the same drainage constraint plus the extract route, which in most towers is a fixed duct you cannot relocate, and the supply position for a hob. This is the point at which a designer earns their fee, because a layout drawn without the riser marked on it is a layout that will be redrawn. Our interior design work starts with the survey for exactly this reason, and the penthouse redesign in Dubai Marina is an example of apartment work in a live tower.

Which permit applies, and who is allowed to file it

Here is the rule most pages skip. Administrative Resolution No. (85) of 2019 requires a Dubai Municipality permit before decoration works in a structural unit larger than 100 square metres, and exempts units of 100 square metres or less, along with units of any size inside a trade centre. The exemption is not a free pass. The same resolution requires the work to be carried out by a contractor approved by the Municipality, and requires the application, where one is needed, to be submitted by that contractor. An owner cannot file it. Administrative Resolution No. (109) of 2022 says the same thing for maintenance works: a consulting engineer or contractor pre-qualified by Dubai Municipality submits through the permit system.

Gulf News reported in May 2023 that the decoration permit covers work such as suspended ceilings, flooring, shelving and internal partitions, and that it is applied for online. Dubai Municipality publishes no issuance time, so any turnaround you are quoted is an estimate. The portal is now Build in Dubai, launched by Dubai Municipality in October 2023, and the old Dubai BPS address redirects to it, although binding law still calls the system the Dubai Building Permit System.

Two things are genuinely unresolved. Sources conflict on whether an apartment bathroom refit needs a municipal permit or only the building's NOC, and nothing published settles it: the 100 square metre threshold measures the unit, not the room. And contractor guides across the market cite "Circular 231 of 2018" as the governing rule. Dubai Municipality's live circulars index, last modified 19 September 2026, contains no circular of that number. The decoration item is circular 3-8-1, Self-Permit for Interior Decoration Works, dated 23 August 2021.

Civil Defence is not automatically involved either. Dubai Municipality's own permit procedure states that a Dubai Civil Defence task is generated only if required, including for adjustments, additions and decoration work. In DDA districts it sits at the completion gate instead: a Dubai Civil Defence completion certificate is required before the fit-out completion certificate is issued. If you want the routes compared properly, read our guide on which approval your renovation needs.

Wet areas are where apartment jobs go wrong

A bathroom in a tower is a tanked box, not a tiled room. Under the tiles sits a waterproof membrane turned up the walls and dressed into the drain, and that membrane is the only thing standing between your shower and the ceiling of the apartment below. Swapping a bath for a walk-in shower is therefore not a finishes job: it changes the wet area, the drain position, the floor falls and usually the screed, and it means the tanking is rebuilt rather than patched.

The Dubai Building Code is given legal force by Decree No. (45) of 2021 and applies across the whole emirate, including free zones and special development zones. Its technical clauses sit in a document almost no owner will ever open, so a blog quoting you an exact fall or membrane specification from it is asking for trust it has not earned. What is not in dispute is who carries the consequence. A leak into the unit below is the most common way an apartment renovation turns into a claim, and it usually surfaces months after the contractor has been paid. This is the part of a renovation and fit-out where flood testing before tiling is worth more than any warranty wording.

Tile over the old floor, or lift it?

There is a real example in the press. The National reported in May 2026 on a couple who spent Dh60,000 to Dh70,000 upgrading a 2,500 square foot three-bedroom apartment at Boulevard Point in Downtown Dubai, with custom joinery and wooden flooring laid as an overlay over the existing tiles. Read the figure carefully before using it as a benchmark: it included furniture, so it is not a renovation rate.

If you do lift, plan the debris route with the building before the first tile comes up. Tile rubble is heavy, it comes out in volume, and the service lift and waste route, not the demolition itself, are what set the programme.

What the building controls, and what nobody publishes

Every tower runs its own fit-out regime and there is no citywide version of it. Typically the building or its owners association wants the contractor's trade licence and insurance, a method statement, drawings, an NOC request, a booked service lift slot, defined working hours, a nominated waste route and a deposit held against damage to common areas. None of that is regulation. It is the building's own rulebook, and it is enforced by the simple expedient of not letting your people through the door.

One example is clearly documented: DMCC publishes an application guideline under which it issues a No Objection Certificate addressed to Concordia, the facilities manager for Jumeirah Lakes Towers, requested through the DMCC member portal. It states no fee and no turnaround. On the developer side, community management for Nakheel, Meraas and Dubai Properties communities now sits with Dubai Holding Community Management, and the former Nakheel communities address redirects there.

Beyond that, be sceptical of numbers. We have not found a master developer in Dubai that publishes its approval or rejection criteria for an apartment alteration NOC, or its fit-out deposit amounts and whether they are refundable. Every figure circulating for those is somebody's recollection of a private commercial term that can change without notice. Get your own building's current fit-out pack in writing and read it before you agree a scope or a programme. If you are a tenant rather than an owner, the landlord's consent comes before any of this, which we cover in the guide on changing a rented home.

Working hours, noise and the neighbours

The honest answer here is unsatisfying. Press reporting attributes to Dubai Municipality a normal construction working window of 7am to 8pm, with a permit required for work between 8pm and 6am. No primary published instrument sets those hours as far as we can establish: the full text of Local Order No. (3) of 1999 contains no working-hours provision and no noise provision at all. Treat the 7am to 8pm figure as widely repeated practice, not as a rule you can cite back at anyone.

On noise, The National and legal commentary both put permissible levels at 55 decibels between 7am and 8pm and 45 decibels between 8pm and 6am, attributed to Dubai Municipality under Local Order No. (61) of 1991. An acoustics contractor's guide gives lower figures, 40 to 50 decibels by day and 30 to 40 at night. The two do not reconcile, the underlying order dates from 1991, and its text is not readily obtainable, so the 55 and 45 pairing is the better-evidenced version rather than a settled one.

Two corrections worth having. A night work permit does exist, and in DDA districts it carries no fee at all rather than a thousand dirhams a night: the Dubai Development Authority operates a Night Shift Work Permit, requested by the contractor, and lists no fee for it. And the summer midday break, the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation rule barring work between 12.30pm and 3pm from 15 June to 15 September, applies to work under the sun and in open places. It does not stop interior work inside an air-conditioned tower, so it is not a reason for your apartment programme to stretch through the summer.

What apartment work costs, and why published figures disagree

Published apartment renovation numbers in Dubai contradict each other badly, and the clearest example comes from one publisher. Property Finder's guide of 25 March 2026 puts a standard-sized apartment renovation at AED 50,000 to 200,000 and anchors it to AED 50 to 200 per square foot. Property Finder's guide of 24 September 2025 puts a whole apartment at AED 250,000 to 450,000. Neither states an apartment size. That is a fivefold gap from a single source in six months, and it cannot be resolved by picking the one you prefer. Use the per square foot band against your own floor area as the sanity check, and treat any flat total as marketing.

What moves the number in a tower is not the square footage. It is how many wet areas you touch, how much of the work is bespoke joinery, and how hard the building makes access. A four-hour lift slot a day and a ban on weekend work will lengthen a programme more than the scope will. For the villa equivalent, with its different constraints, see what a villa renovation costs in Dubai.

The order to do it in

1. Survey before you designGet the riser and duct positions, the slab soffit, the existing drainage and the floor build-ups recorded. Every later decision depends on them.
2. Ask the building for its fit-out packIn writing. It sets the NOC process, the documents wanted from your contractor, permitted hours, service lift booking, the waste route and any deposit.
3. Fix the layout against the constraintsTest the new plan against the drainage falls and the structure, and settle whether wet areas move or stay before drawings go for approval.
4. Produce the drawings and the method statementThe building will want to see what is being built and how, including protection of common areas, and the authority submission is built from the same set.
5. Obtain the building's NOCIt comes first, because in DDA districts the building owner's NOC is one of the documents submitted with the permit application, alongside the Ejari copy and the contractor appointment letter.
6. Let the contractor file the permitWhere a permit is required, the approved contractor or the consulting engineer submits it. If someone tells you the owner can file it, check who you are dealing with.
7. Programme the noisy work around the buildingDemolition and lifting floors are the work that draws complaints. Do it in the permitted window, with the lift booked and the waste route agreed.
8. Test, then close outFlood test wet areas before tiling, and take the completion steps the district requires. In DDA districts a Dubai Civil Defence completion certificate is required before the fit-out completion certificate.

If you want a second opinion on whether your layout works before spending money on drawings, send it to us. HST is a design-and-build practice, so the same team that tells you what is feasible is the one that has to build it.