Painting in City Walk — Central Park

Painting in City Walk's Central Park towers is a different ball game compared to a standard villa or apartment. First off, you can't just rock up with a ladder and start working — every tower here has strict access rules through Meraas building management, and we've got to coordinate with their engineer to shut off the FCU cooling system for each unit. If you don't, that fine dust from sanding gets sucked right into the chilled water loops, and you'll have 47 complaints from neighbors before lunch. The finish quality is unusually high too — these 2018–2022 builds came with premium trim and skirting that's trickier to cut around, so we're charging AED 8.50 per square foot for interior work, not the AED 7 you'd see in older Dubai towers. Another thing: the outdoor condensing units on the balconies collect urban grime from City Walk's car traffic and nearby construction at Dubai Design District. We've had to use anti-mould paint on the exterior window tracks twice as often as we do in suburban villas. One limitation I'll admit — we can't always match the original builder's paint sheen perfectly, especially on those feature walls in the Central Park Residences, because Meraas used a custom mix that's not available at standard DEWA-approved suppliers.

For a 2-bedroom apartment in Central Park at City Walk, you're looking at AED 7,800 to AED 9,600 for walls and ceilings—that's based on our standard rate of AED 8.50 per square foot for these towers. We charge AED 12 per square foot if you want the trim and skirting done too, which adds about AED 1,200 to AED 1,800 depending on the layout. The whole job usually takes 4 to 5 days for a 1,200-square-foot unit, but we can't start until the building engineer gives us access to the FCU system—that's a Meraas rule, and it can add a day if they're slow. The process is straightforward: we do a site visit, you pick colors (we'll help with that), we move furniture to the center and cover everything, then we paint. One honest limitation: the high finish quality in these towers means the walls are perfectly smooth, so any brush marks show easily. We use a 3/8-inch nap roller to avoid that, but don't expect to hide prep work—if there's a patch, it'll show unless we skim it first.