A bathroom renovation in Dubai costs AED 20,000 to 45,000 for a standard apartment bathroom, and AED 45,000 to 90,000 for a villa master bathroom with imported stone and custom joinery. A basic refresh of finishes without moving plumbing lands at the low end, AED 12,000 to 18,000. Those ranges have held across our projects for the past two years, and the sections below show what sits inside each band and what pushes a quote past it.
What a quote should contain
Every serious bathroom quote splits into the same parts: demolition and disposal, waterproofing, plumbing and electrical work, tiling, sanitary ware, joinery, and fittings. If a contractor hands you one lump sum with no breakdown, you have no way to compare it or to hold anyone to a line item later. On our projects the waterproofing and plumbing lines together are 20 to 30 percent of the total, more if the layout moves.
The three cost bands
Refresh, AED 12,000 to 18,000. Same layout, same plumbing positions. New tiles or microcement over prepared surfaces, repainting, new mirror, tapware and accessories. Two to three weeks on site. This band works when the existing waterproofing is sound, and only a flood test tells you that. Skip the test and you’re gambling the whole room.
Standard, AED 20,000 to 45,000. This covers most apartment bathrooms in Dubai Marina, JVC and Business Bay. The room is stripped back to the slab, waterproofing is redone, tiles run AED 80 to 200 per square metre, and the sanitary ware is a mid-range set from RAK, Kohler or Grohe. A vanity from stock ranges, a frameless glass screen, new lighting. Three to five weeks on site.
Villa master, AED 45,000 to 90,000. Larger floor area, a separate shower and bath, imported stone at AED 300 to 900 per square metre, and a custom joinery vanity. Freestanding basins, wall-hung units, niche detailing in the shower. Add a porcelain slab feature wall and the stone line alone can pass AED 15,000. Six to nine weeks on site.
The line items nobody quotes upfront
Three items get missed or buried on first quotes. First, waterproofing: a proper membrane system to full height in the shower zone and at least 300 mm elsewhere, with a 48-hour flood test before tiling. Budget AED 2,500 to 5,000 for a standard room. Skipping it to save money is the most expensive decision in the whole renovation, because a leak means stripping the bathroom again plus repairing the ceiling below.
Second, waste and drainage rework. Moving a toilet even 600 mm means breaking the slab, re-running the soil pipe and reinstating concrete. That single decision commonly adds AED 4,000 to 8,000. Keep the toilet where it is unless the layout is genuinely broken.
Third, electrical. Extractor fan routing, shaver points, mirror lighting and underfloor heating each pull their own cable run. Underfloor heating mats run AED 150 to 250 per square metre installed, and they need their own circuit.
Do you need a permit
Most bathroom renovations inside an apartment need no municipality permit if the plumbing positions stay put and no walls change. Building management still wants notice, a work method statement and contractor insurance, and most buildings ask for a refundable damage deposit. Villas in Trakhees or Nakheel areas follow their own community rules, so check before you order materials. If you move wet areas or touch structural walls, the permit question changes and you should read the villa permits guide first.
Where the money actually goes
On a standard AED 35,000 bathroom, a typical split looks like this: tiling and screeds about 30 percent, sanitary ware and fittings about 25 percent, plumbing and electrical about 15 percent, waterproofing about 10 percent, joinery about 10 percent, demolition, disposal and making good the rest. Percentages drift with your tile choice more than anything else, which is why we fix the tile budget before anything else in the first client meeting.
Timelines
Count from demolition to snag clearance. A refresh runs two to three weeks. A standard strip-out runs three to five weeks, and most of the calendar goes to waiting: waterproofing cure, screed cure, tile cure, then silicon and snagging. A villa master suite runs six to nine weeks. Materials on a standard project arrive within one to two weeks from order if you choose from stock in Dubai showrooms. Imported stone and custom vanities need four to eight weeks, so they get ordered before demolition starts, never after.
Sanitary ware and where it pays to spend
Sanitary ware pricing in Dubai splits cleanly into three shelves. Budget sets from RAK Ceramics or a house brand run AED 2,000 to 4,000 for toilet, basin and bath combined, and they hold up fine in rental units. Mid-range Kohler, Grohe or Villeroy and Boch sets run AED 6,000 to 12,000 and carry proper warranties on the flushing and tap cartridges, which is the part that actually fails over ten years. Top-shelf imported pieces run AED 15,000 and up, and that spend is a comfort choice, not a reliability one.
Our rule on projects: put the money into the tap cartridges, the shower valve and the waterproofing, because those are the things you cannot replace without opening walls. Save on the mirror, the accessories and the towel rails, which swap out in five minutes at any point.
What moves a bathroom past its budget
In our experience the same three things push projects over. Relocating plumbing, covered above. Stone upgrades decided after tiling has started, when offcuts and remeasures cost more than ordering right the first time. And scope creep on joinery, where a stock vanity becomes a custom run because the stock unit misses the room by 40 mm. Measure early, order once.
If you’re weighing the bathroom spend against a full apartment refurbishment, the apartment renovation cost guide puts the bathroom line in context of the whole project. And if the layout itself is the problem rather than the finishes, start with clearances and dimensions before you price anything, because a fixed layout is a fixed budget. For context on the wider fit-out market, our fit-out cost per square foot benchmarks cover how the trades price across a whole home.
If you want a bathroom costed against your own room and layout, we’re happy to look at it in a short consultation.
