Powder rooms
The smallest room in the house, priced and planned like one. We check powder room quotes against the published per-room bands and against your building's rules on floors and drains.
Scope and price
A powder room is a toilet and a basin with no shower or bath, usually near the entrance where guests use it. That keeps a powder room renovation in Dubai short and contained. There are two fixed points, the soil pipe under the toilet and the waste under the basin, and a floor that takes splashes rather than a daily soaking.
How much does a powder room renovation cost in Dubai?
Expect AED 8,000 to 15,000 for a powder room stripped out and rebuilt at basic finishes. No UAE company prices a powder room separately, and that is the published band for the nearest room, a small guest bathroom. If the tiles and pipes stay and only the fittings and surfaces change, the refresh band applies instead: AED 3,000 to 9,000. Both figures are per room, and our bathroom cost guide names who published each one.
| Scope | What changes | Published band (AED per room) |
|---|---|---|
| Refresh | Fittings and surfaces renewed; tiles and pipes untouched | 3,000 to 9,000 |
| Full rebuild, basic finishes | Strip-out, new floor and wall tiles, WC, basin and fittings | 8,000 to 15,000 |
| Small bathroom upgrade | The lowest tier in one property portal's bathroom table | 10,000 to 30,000 |
The refresh row is Revive Hub Renovations' minor refresh band, and MBC Renovation Services starts its own refresh at AED 5,000. The rebuild row is the range Design Divine and TaskRight publish for a small bathroom, with Yalla Renovation starting at AED 8,500. The upgrade row is Bayut's. A powder room has no shower tray, bath or shower glass, so those lines should be missing from its quote. A total that includes them is pricing a different room.
The one the drains already allow. A powder room layout is set by the soil pipe: the toilet sits on it, and moving the toilet means new drainage under the floor. In a villa that is a plumbing job, and whether it also needs an approval depends on the community, which we check before it is priced. In an Emaar apartment it is off the table, because relocating MEP systems is not permitted there.
Inside those fixed points, three choices change the room more than the tiles do.
A matt porcelain tile is the default: it shrugs off splashes and cleaning products and keeps its grip when wet. The bigger question in Dubai is often whether the old floor can come up at all. Emaar keeps apartment tiles in place and allows new ones only on top, and Town Square's apartment manual says the same. Tilal Al Ghaf asks for written consent before any floor covering is altered or replaced. Our tiling page covers laying new tiles over old ones.
No UAE company publishes a price for either material, so we will not put a number on that. What Town Square does publish is the approval cost of each route, and for a powder room floor it separates three ways of doing the job.
| Floor route | Town Square tier | Published fee and time |
|---|---|---|
| SPC planks laid over the existing tiles | Home improvement | AED 160 |
| New tiles glued on top of the existing ones | Minor alteration | AED 1,000, decided in 2 working days |
| Old floor tiles lifted and replaced | Major alteration, townhouses only | AED 2,000 plus an AED 5,000 deposit, 5 working days |
SPC is a rigid plank of PVC and stone powder that clicks together over the existing floor. With no shower in the room there is no standing water to work into the joints, which makes a powder room a better fit for it than a shower room. The trade-off is the look and the feel underfoot, and that part is your call.
Less often than a full bathroom. Dubai Municipality treats replacing floors and maintaining sanitary installations as basic maintenance, with no permit or completion certificate, provided the contractor is pre-qualified by the Municipality. The community layer decides the rest.
Outside Dubai the same room follows the emirate's own route. In Abu Dhabi a refit that keeps the walls runs on a maintenance permit that the contractor files, as our Abu Dhabi guide explains. If the powder room is one room in a larger job, the main bathroom page shows how we price every room on its own line.
Scope
New WC, basin mixer, mirror, accessories and sealant on the existing pipes, with the tiles left in place. The published refresh band starts at AED 3,000 per room.
from AED 3,000
Stripped to the slab and rebuilt: new floor and wall tiles, WC, basin or vanity, lighting and fittings. Published bands for a small room at basic finishes start at AED 8,000.
from AED 8,000 per room
Questions
Villa or apartment, the community, and what you want changed. We come back with contractors who quote against the published bands, and show you where each quote sits against them.