Interior Design and Fit-Out in Dubai Media City

What a media business needs from its rooms

Creative agencies, publishers and production companies rarely work at one pace all day. A morning of quiet editing can turn into an afternoon of client reviews, a photo shoot in the meeting room or a crowd around one screen. The plan has to absorb those swings without every room becoming a compromise.

We begin by mapping the working day rather than counting desks. Who needs silence, who needs to be seen by visiting clients, where equipment lives between jobs and how material moves in and out of the building all shape the layout before any finish is chosen. Technical rooms such as recording booths or broadcast areas need a specialist acoustic or systems consultant, and we plan the interior around what they specify rather than guessing at it.

• Enclosed rooms for editing, calls and confidential pitches
• A review or screening room with proper blackout and seating
• Lockable storage for cameras, lighting and props
• A reception that carries the brand for visiting clients
• Breakout space that also works for informal shoots

Boutique villas, office floors and retail units

The boutique villas are the most distinctive option in the district. Dubai Media City describes them as offices with attached studios that can be leased as a whole building, and pitches them at TV stations and production companies. A self-contained building gives a tenant more say over the arrival, the stair and the layout of each floor, but it also means thinking about how people, kit and guests move between levels.

Office floors in the district's multi-tenant buildings follow a more familiar pattern: a shell or a previous tenant's fit-out inside a shared building, with its own management and access rules. Retail units add a shopfront and passing trade to the brief. For each type we survey what is already there, note what can be kept and agree what has to be stripped out before the design moves on.

The fit-out permit and landlord consent

Media City tenants deal with the Dubai Development Authority when it comes to fit-out permits. Its fit-out permit service is set up for the contractor to obtain a permit before work starts on any part of a building, office or retail unit, and then to submit for completion so the finished works can be checked against the permit.

In practice that means the tenant, the landlord and the contractor all have a part to play, and the drawings have to be ready before anyone applies. We confirm the route for each address. After that we draw what the submission calls for and line up building management's consent ahead of your contractor's start date. How long a review takes is not in our hands, so we avoid promising a date. Our authority approvals page lists the documents we usually produce.

Fitting out without disrupting the building

Most tenants in the district share a building with other businesses, and some of those neighbours may be recording, filming or broadcasting while your works are under way. Building management usually sets the hours for noisy work, the rules for deliveries and the routes contractors may use, and it pays to know them before the programme is fixed.

Where the team must keep producing during the fit-out, the job can be broken into stages, with live areas screened off and the loudest tasks moved to agreed hours. Deliveries are timed to keep lifts and loading bays clear, and at the end we tour the finished space with you, log each snag and close it out before handover.

Our commercial projects elsewhere in Dubai

The clearest comparison for a Media City office is our MK Pay office in Baniyas Square, Deira. We took that 3,100 sq ft office from the first floor plan, mood boards and 3D views through authority approvals and project management to a completed design and build handover in 2023. Shared work zones sit beside private cabins, the reception desk carries discreet branding, and the meeting rooms have audiovisual kit for presentations.

The Luxury Salon we completed in Dubai Marina is the better reference for anything client-facing, because its guests judge the brand the moment they walk in. We planned its 2,500 sq ft, presented it through mood boards and 3D images, then designed and built it, finishing in 2024. A sculptural stone desk and curved, softly lit wall panels set the tone from the doorway.

Design only, or design and build

Some media tenants already have a contractor they trust, often one who has built for them before. That contractor receives our concept, 3D renders, specification and drawing set, and we remain on call for queries while the space is built. Others want one team responsible from the first sketch to handover, including procurement, supervision and coordination with the building.

Either way, the design is tested against your headcount, the equipment you own and how you expect the business to grow. Our office interior design page explains the approach in more detail. After handover, any works we have built for a media tenant carry a 12-month defects liability period set out in your contract; its terms are agreed before work begins.

Cost and how to start

We take on projects from AED 150,000. Past that threshold the price follows the floor area, the count of enclosed or acoustically treated rooms, the amount of made-to-measure joinery, the finish grade, MEP alterations and the furniture package. A whole boutique villa naturally involves more than a single office floor, so tell us which you are taking on.

Our project estimate form asks for the building or villa, the floor area and a few lines about how your team spends its day. The reply, due inside one working day, puts an indicative number on the scope and sketches a programme. If you are still comparing addresses, our page on Dubai Internet City covers the neighbouring tech district.