Office interior design · Dubai
Fajr Interiors is an office interior design company in Dubai: office interior design is the drawing stage of one design-and-build contract. In four weeks we survey your floor, test fit it three ways, check the plan for the common mistakes, set the concept and materials, and detail a technical set a contractor can price and build from. The team that draws it then builds it.
For office floors of 2,000–20,000 sqft, in the towers and free zones of Dubai and in Abu Dhabi, from open-plan teams to executive floors.
Space planning
Office space planning in Dubai — the six inputs behind every test fit.
A space plan is not a furniture layout. It is your organisation drawn onto one specific floor: who sits where, who needs quiet, who meets whom, and what the lease allows. Six inputs decide it, and each is written down before the first test fit is drawn, because every line on the plan answers one of them.
How many people sit on the floor on the day you move in, and how many it must hold before the lease ends.
Decides the desk count and the growth space
Focus, calls, meetings, hybrid days: written down per team before a line is drawn.
Decides the ratio of rooms to open desks
Teams that trade work ten times a day sit close; the rest can be a walk apart.
Decides which teams share a zone
Pantry, print and meeting-room chatter grouped together, away from the work that needs quiet.
Decides where the noisy rooms go
The plan checked against the real floor: columns, risers, daylight and the column that is not where the PDF says.
Decides what can go where at all
Rent-free period, move-in date, the tower’s fitout guide and working hours.
Decides the programme and what is built first
Test fits
Office test fits in Dubai — a worked example, not a client’s floor.
A test fit draws your headcount and room list onto one specific floor before the plan is fixed, often before the lease is signed. We draw the floor three ways and count what each gives: workstations, meeting rooms and area per person. You choose on those numbers, and the chosen option goes into rounds of refinement.
Enclosed offices along both façades, open desks between them. Suits confidential work and a senior team, and spends the most partition and the most area on each person.
Open desks across the floor and a few large rooms. The most desks for the area, and it only holds with an acoustic ceiling and enough small rooms for calls.
Offices for the roles that need a door, bookable rooms for everyone else, a boardroom and a café. In this worked example, the option taken into refinement.
Three options is where the planning starts, not where it ends. IMI at One Za’abeel chose from three and signed its plan after fifteen rounds; the plan check below is run on the option you choose.
A real floor
The worked example above uses invented numbers. These are three test fits we drew for a client’s floor, client details withheld. The core, the façade and the executive end of the floor stay put; reception, the guest spaces and how each department sits are what change.
Site verification
The chosen test fit, marked out on the floor at full size.
A plan can still surprise you at full size. Before the layout is signed, we mark it out on the slab itself, wall by wall and door by door, and walk it with you. A room that feels tight on the floor is changed on the drawing, while the change still costs nothing.
Film · Stage 2 · site verificationWhat we check on the marked-out floor
On one Opus Tower floor, the client walked the marked-out plan, found it tighter than the drawing suggested and asked for more meeting rooms. The layout changed on paper, before a partition went up.
Plan check
Common office planning mistakes — shown on an illustrative floorplate, not a client’s plan.
Most office planning mistakes cost nothing to avoid and a great deal to live with. They are made innocently, on the plan, months before anyone sits at a desk. This illustrative floor carries the six we find most often: switch between the plan as drawn and as corrected, then open any pin to see what changed.
Mistake 01Caught at: Test fit
Mistake 02Caught at: Test fit
Mistake 03Caught at: Concept
Mistake 04Caught at: Space plan
Mistake 05Caught at: Test fit
Mistake 06Caught at: Test fit
Run the check on the test fit, when moving a room costs a line on a drawing rather than a partition on site.
Concept and materials
Office design in Dubai — the decisions between the signed plan and the technical set.
Concept turns the signed plan into one direction for space, material and light, agreed before a single finish is ordered. Samples are reviewed against the plan, in the light they will sit in. Lighting is drawn with the ceiling, and acoustics room by room, so the technical set inherits decisions rather than inventing them.
Note 1 · Concept
Space, material and light agreed as one idea, so every later drawing has something to be checked against.
Note 2 · Materials
Floors, walls, joinery finishes and fabrics reviewed together, in the light they will sit in, before the palette is fixed.
Note 3 · Light
Fittings are placed on the reflected ceiling plan with the joinery. Luxury office interiors in Dubai, from CEO suites to boardrooms and executive floors, run through the same four-week design stage. The controls those floors need are set out on luxury office interior design in Dubai →
Note 4 · Acoustics
Partitions, ceilings and soft finishes chosen by what each room is for: focus, calls, meetings or the social end of the floor.
On film
Office interior design decisions, shown rather than described.
Three decisions from this page are easier to see than to read: glass that turns private at a touch, partitions that keep sound in the room, and a layout changed on screen with the client in it.
Instagram · Zeeshan PatelOne tap, full privacy.
Switchable glass that turns from clear to opaque, double-glazed panels and 50 dB sound insulation, explained by Zeeshan Patel.
Film · IMI, One Za’abeelOpen to the eye, closed to sound.
The boardroom and other privacy-critical rooms at IMI sit behind 99 mm double-glazed acoustic partitions.
Film · IMI, One Za’abeelClear to private at a touch.
Switchable glass with lighting and room controls built in, as delivered at IMI at One Za’abeel.
Instagram · Design reviewMarked up live. Not emailed.
The layout changed on screen while the client stood there: one session instead of four rounds of email.
The technical set
The office drawing register — what each sheet is, who builds from it, and when it is issued.
The technical set is where design becomes buildable. Our aim is plain: a set a contractor can price and build without asking a question. It coordinates plans, ceilings, partitions, joinery and MEP into one register, issued in stages, so the landlord, the authorities and the site all work from the same drawings.
IssuedNot yet issuedApproval issue goes to the landlord and authorities; the 2–4 weeks of approvals start from the drawings the site will use.
A floor drawn by one firm and built by another leaves a gap, and the gap is where variations are born.
Design and cost
How office interior design fixes the office fitout cost in Dubai — lever by lever, week by week.
Most of what an office fitout costs is decided on paper, weeks before site. The ratio of rooms to open desks, how far the services move, which materials carry long lead times and how much joinery is made rather than bought are all fixed during design. That is why we price against drawings rather than a rate.
An office fitout in Dubai starts at AED 350 per sqft for shell-to-occupied — partitions, ceilings, flooring, MEP alterations and joinery. Turnkey, with FF&E, IT, AV, automation and appliances included, runs AED 600–850 per sqft. IMI at One Za’abeel landed at AED 840 per sqft; Opus by Omniyat, in its final weeks before handover, is contracted at AED 726. Design fees on their own are set out in interior design cost in Dubai →
Week 2 · fixed in week 2
Rooms against open desks: the first large lever, fixed the moment the space plan is signed.
Pull on the number · Moderate · set early
Weeks 2–4 · fixed in week 4
How far cooling, power and data move to suit the plan. Rarely visible in a render, always visible in the price.
Pull on the number · Lower · hard to see in a concept
Week 3 · fixed in week 3
Stone, veneer and made pieces run about eight weeks, so the schedule is signed with the concept, while the lead time still fits the programme.
Pull on the number · High · lead-time sensitive
Weeks 3–4 · fixed in week 4
Reception, panelling and meeting-room fronts: often the largest single lever on where the number lands.
Pull on the number · Highest
Open for decisionFixed on the drawings
A rate given before drawings exist is a planning band. The quotation is built line by line from the set, which is why the set comes first.
The design stage
The four-week office design stage, and what each week issues.
The design stage runs four weeks, and each week closes something the next depends on: the brief and survey, the space plan and test fit, the concept presentation and material board, then the technical set. Landlord and authority approvals follow for 2–4 weeks, then 16–18 weeks of build and 2 weeks of furnishing.
Headcount, work pattern, room list and lease dates written down; the floor measured and its services checked against the building’s fitout guide.
IssuedBrief · survey drawing
Three test fits drawn and counted on the surveyed floor, the chosen option refined, run through the plan check and marked out on the floor to be walked, then signed.
IssuedThree test fits · signed space plan
One direction for space, material and light presented, with the material board reviewed in the room; long-lead items identified and scheduled.
IssuedConcept presentation · material board
Plans, ceilings, partitions, joinery, MEP and life safety coordinated into one register.
IssuedSet issued for approval
The team
Our office interior designers are the team that builds the floor. Design director Uzma Anis leads the studio, with senior architect Adrian Ariscon and architect Kishore Mahendran drawing the test fits, the concept and the technical set, for floors in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Two plans
Office interior design in practice — one floor delivered, one in its final weeks.
Two executive floors show the drawings at work. IMI at One Za’abeel went through three layout options and fifteen planning rounds to a signed plan, then was built to a fixed move-in date. Opus by Omniyat, a floor with little natural light, was planned around borrowed light through glass partitions and is in its final weeks before handover.
“Great feeling walking into this beautiful office.”
The brief: enclosed offices, sit-stand desks, a wellness room, a kitchen and a boardroom on one floor, against a move-in date that could not move. The plan was compared as three options, then refined round by round until it was signed.
3 options15 planning roundsSigned
Turnkey, from client brief to handover, on a floor with little natural light.
The plan puts glass partitions wherever the layout allows, so daylight from the façade is borrowed through the rooms and reaches the inner floor. The floor is under construction, on a 24-week programme, in its final weeks before handover.
PlannedApprovedUnder constructionHandover
Drawn, then built
IMI at One Za’abeel: each render beside the photograph of the same room.
A render is a promise about a real room. Here are four from IMI at One Za’abeel, each next to the photograph taken after handover.
The boardroom and its walnut screen wall.
The social space, against the stone wall.
The sitting area by the window.
The entrance, and the lounge behind glass.
Renders and photographs are labelled. The full IMI project
Drawn, then made
The curved reception desk for Crypto One on Sheikh Zayed Road: its sweep marked and checked against templates in the joinery workshop, then set and lit in the finished reception. A piece like this is decided in the drawings long before it is made.
Delivered
Office interiors, photographed after handover.
Boardrooms, receptions, executive offices and work floors from four delivered projects. Open any of them for the brief, the plan and the result.
Crypto OneReception · Sheikh Zayed Road
Crypto OneBoardroom · Sheikh Zayed Road
Crypto OneExecutive office · Sheikh Zayed Road
Global TextilesExecutive office · Opus Tower
Global TextilesReception · Opus Tower
International MaterialsMeeting room · Opus by Omniyat
International MaterialsWork floor · Opus by Omniyat
SereneBoardroom · Vision Tower
SereneMeeting room · Vision TowerDesign FAQ
Office interior design FAQ — Dubai.
Space planning and three test fits, a plan check, a concept with its material, lighting and acoustic direction, and the technical set the site builds from. With us it is the first four weeks of one design-and-build contract, so the same team takes the drawings through approvals, the build and the furniture.
The design stage runs four weeks: brief and survey, space planning and test fit, the concept presentation and material board, then the technical set. Landlord and authority approvals follow in 2–4 weeks, the build takes 16–18 weeks and furnishing 2, so a full office programme runs 6–7 months from brief to handover.
A test fit is your floor drawn with your headcount and room list before the plan is fixed, often before the lease is signed. We draw three options on the same floorplate and count the workstations, meeting rooms and area per person each gives, so the choice is made on numbers.
Yes. We review them first. Often the layout is sound and the technical layer is thin: ceilings, MEP coordination and joinery details. We tell you what we would change and why, complete the set, and price the fitout against the finished drawings rather than against the gaps.
Your headcount now and the headcount you are planning for, how your teams work across focus, calls, meetings and hybrid days, the landlord’s floor plan, and your lease dates. Those four decide the test fit, the programme and the approvals route before anyone starts drawing.
Materials are fixed during the concept, before the technical set is drawn. Stone, veneer and made joinery carry about eight weeks of lead time, so they are ordered against the signed plan. Chosen late, they set the finish date instead of the programme setting it.
Ask to see delivered floors with their size, cost and programme, and check that the company takes the drawings through landlord and authority approvals and onto site. A design drawn by one firm and built by another leaves the technical gaps to be argued over during the build. Fajr Interiors designs and builds offices in Dubai on one contract, under trade licence 648890: IMI at One Za’abeel, 5,000 sqft, was delivered in 28 weeks for AED 4.2M.
Start in the right order
Send the landlord’s floor plan, your headcount and your lease dates. The first thing we draw is the test fit: three ways to plan your floor, counted.
Trade licence 648890 · Interior contracting, G+1 approved contractor (Dubai Municipality) · Registered with Emaar, Nakheel, DDA, Trakhees, Dubai Municipality and Dubai Civil Defence · DMCC, DIFC and JAFZA free zones