Apartment Painting and Villa Repaints: How Long It Takes and How to Prepare the Rooms

Where the hours go

On a sound wall in a home that was painted a few years ago, preparation is quick: a wipe, a few filled holes, a light sand. On a wall with long cracks, old patches, flaking paint or the holes of twenty picture hooks, preparation can take longer than both coats together. This is the stage that decides how the finish holds up, and it is the one that cannot be seen once the paint is on, which is why it is the first thing cut on a job that has been priced too low. Our painting quotes treat filling, patching and sanding as part of the work, not as an extra.

Dry to the touch, ready for the next coat, fully hard

Paint has three drying times, and they are often confused. Dry to the touch means it no longer marks a finger, and most water-based emulsions get there within an hour or two. Ready to recoat means the film is firm enough to take another coat without lifting. For emulsions that is usually a few hours, and the tin states the minimum. Fully hard, or cured, means the film has reached its final strength, and that takes weeks.

The middle figure sets the pace of the job. It is why two coats on one room cannot be done in a single hour by adding painters, and why a painter works round the home in a loop: first coat in one room, on to the next, back to the first when it is ready. Filler has its own wait. Small holes are ready to sand within hours, but a deep crack filled in two passes may be left overnight. Solvent-based enamel on doors and frames needs far longer between coats than wall paint, often until the next day. Water-based enamel is quicker.

What moves a job along the range

Area sets the starting point. These are the things that add to it.

Why one room is rarely less than half a day

Add the stages up for a single bedroom: covering and taping, filling, waiting for the filler, sanding, the first coat, waiting again, the second coat, the check and the uncovering. Even with nothing wrong with the walls, the two waits alone fill a morning. That is why the quick way to paint a whole apartment is not one room at a time to the finish. It is all rooms prepared together, all first coats together and all second coats together. More painters shorten the working stages. They do not shorten the waits.

Villas take longer for more reasons than size

A villa has more wall, and it also has the things that slow a painter down: a stairwell, a double-height entrance hall or majlis, long corridors, more doors and frames, and often ceilings with cornices or gypsum details that have to be cut in by brush. High walls need a platform or a small scaffold, which has to be built, moved and taken down. A larger villa is commonly painted floor by floor, so that the family can live on one level while the other is done.

If a cracked ceiling or a stained board needs repair first, that is gypsum and false ceiling work. The repair is finished paint-ready before the painter starts, and the two can be scheduled together.

An empty home is the quickest home to paint

With nothing to move or cover, a painter can prepare every room at once and work without stepping round beds and wardrobes. If you are moving in, have the painting done before the furniture arrives. If you are a landlord between tenancies, do it after the old tenant's belongings are out and before the clean. Where neither is possible, the next quickest arrangement is furniture pulled to the centre of each room and everything small already packed away.

Decide these before the painter is booked

A quote is a price for a described job, so the description has to be settled first. What a painter needs measured and photographed is listed in how to get an accurate repair quote.

• Exactly which rooms and walls, and whether ceilings, doors, frames and skirting are included.
• The colour and finish for each room. Changing your mind after the first coat means starting that room again.
• Who supplies the paint, and which product. In a rented home, ask the landlord which white the property is finished in.
• Which wall fixings are staying. Say which hooks, brackets and plugs are to be filled and which will be used again.
• The dates on which work cannot be done: guests, exams, a delivery, a newborn's first weeks at home.

Clearing the rooms: your part and the painter's

On our jobs the team protects the remaining furniture and the flooring with sheeting. You help most by taking out what is small, fragile or valuable, and by leaving a clear strip along every wall.

• Take down pictures, mirrors, clocks and wall shelves. Keep each set of screws in a labelled bag.
• Take down curtains, or tie them up and bag them. Fabric holds the smell of paint and catches roller spatter.
• Clear the tops of furniture, and move lamps, plants, electronics and ornaments to a room that is not being painted.
• Pull beds, sofas and tables to the centre of the room, leaving about a metre clear along each wall where the room allows.
• Empty any bookcase or display cabinet that has to be moved. A loaded one cannot be shifted safely.
• Roll up rugs and take them out. A rug under a dust sheet is a trip hazard and still collects dust.
• Say in advance what you cannot move yourself. Moving and protecting furniture is one of the things a painting quote is based on.

Fitted wardrobes, wall-mounted TVs and switches

Fitted wardrobes, kitchen units and built-in shelving are painted round, not behind. A wall-mounted television is safer lifted off its bracket by two people and laid flat in another room. The bracket can stay and be masked. Light fittings, AC grilles, thermostats, switches and sockets are masked by the painter. Do not unscrew electrical faceplates yourself to make the job easier. If a fitting has to come off the wall, that is for someone who has switched the circuit off at the breaker and knows how to refit it.

Point out every crack, stain and damp patch

Walk the rooms with the painter before the covers go down and show every crack, hole, peeling patch and stain, including the ones behind furniture. A crack is filled and sanded. A stain is a different matter, because it has a cause. A brown ring on a ceiling, or paint lifting beside a bathroom, means water, and a wall that is still damp cannot be painted: the new coat blisters within weeks. Say whether the leak was found and repaired, and when. The order of those repairs is set out in water stain on the ceiling or peeling paint: what to fix first.

The building and the landlord

In an apartment building, ask the management office or the security desk what they need before a painter arrives. Some buildings want notice of this kind of work, some set the hours in which contractors may work, and some want ladders and materials brought up in the service lift. These rules are each building's own, so check yours and tell us when you book. A working day cut short by the building's hours changes the programme. How registration, lifts and parking usually work is described in the guide to visitor registration, service lifts and parking in towers.

If you rent, read what the tenancy contract says about decoration before you change a colour, and ask the landlord in writing if it is not clear. What is looked at when the keys go back is covered in move-out cleaning and your deposit.

A room order that keeps the home usable

The principle is that the home is never all wet at once.

1. 1Agree the order of rooms with the painter on the first morning, and write it down.
2. 2Keep one bedroom and one bathroom untouched until the others are finished, so that there is always somewhere to sleep and wash.
3. 3Start with the bedrooms. They then have the longest time to air before anyone sleeps in them.
4. 4Do the kitchen on a day when you can eat out or order in. The worktops are covered and the room is out of use until the last coat is dry.
5. 5Leave corridors and the entrance hall until last. Everyone, the painter included, walks through them carrying things.
6. 6Move back into a room only when its tape and sheeting have come off.

Children, pets and anyone sensitive to the smell

Keep children and pets out of the room being painted and the one next to it, and shut the door on open tins, trays and tools at the end of each day. Door frames and skirting stay tacky longer than walls. Birds are sensitive to fumes of any kind, so move a cage to the far end of the home or to a neighbour's, and cover a fish tank while its room is painted.

Wall emulsion has little smell. Solvent-based enamels and some stain-blocking primers have far more, so ask which products are in the quote. If someone at home has asthma or another breathing condition, or is pregnant and concerned, ask a doctor before the work is arranged, and plan for that person to be out while it is done and for a day or two afterwards.

Having it done while you are away

A summer trip is a convenient time for a repaint, because nobody has to live round it. Three things have to be arranged first. Someone you trust must be able to let the team in and out, and the building must know they are coming. The colour should be approved on the wall before you leave, or by photo on the first day, not discovered on your return. And the AC should be left running at a moderate setting for the whole job and for some days after it, because a closed, warm, humid home dries paint badly.

The opposite case is a home being made ready for guests before Ramadan or Eid. Leave a clear week between the last coat and the first visitors if you can. The smell has gone by then, and the paint is hard enough to stand chairs, hands and trays against it.

Why the windows stay shut in the humid months

In summer the outside air carries far more moisture than the air indoors. Let it in, and it meets walls that the AC has kept cool. Water condenses on them, as it does on a cold glass, and a wet coat of paint cannot dry on a wall that is taking on water. The paint stays soft for longer, and in bad cases it dries with streaks or a patchy sheen. Leave the windows shut, keep the AC running, and let the bathroom and kitchen extractor fans carry the smell out. Opening the internal doors lets air from the painted room reach those fans.

Dust is the other reason. After a windy day there is fine sand in the air, and it sticks to wet paint. On those days the windows stay closed whatever the season.

During sanding, protect the AC

Sanding filler makes a very fine dust, and an AC unit that is running pulls it straight into its filter and, in a ducted system, into the return air path. A careful painter switches the AC off in the room being sanded, covers the grille or the indoor unit, vacuums the dust up, and only then uncovers it and turns the cooling back on for painting. Ask for this if it is not offered. In a home where one ducted system serves several rooms, the return air is shared, so dust and smell from one room reach the others and a closed door does not stop them.

While the paint dries

Keep the AC at the setting you normally live with. Nothing is gained by making the room very cold. Do not switch it off overnight between coats in summer to save power, because a few hours of still, humid air undoes the drying. Do not point a heater at a wall to hurry it either. Heat on fresh paint can blister it.

After the job: filters and vents

When the work is finished, wash or change the AC filters, and wipe the grilles once the paint near them is dry. If a lot of sanding was done with the AC running, or the job included plaster or gypsum repairs, dust will have travelled further than the filter. AC duct cleaning is then worth booking, so that the dust is not blown back into clean rooms.

Choosing between the three

Painting on its own makes little dust, so a repaint with ordinary preparation is followed by a deep clean, priced from the same list as every other visit. As a yardstick, our hours guide for a deep clean of a two-bedroom apartment is 2 cleaners for 4 hours each, which is AED 240 without materials or AED 280 with ours. Every price includes VAT. Say when you book that the home has just been painted and where the specks are, so that time is allowed for them.

When the walls were sanded back hard, re-plastered or patched with gypsum board, the dust is of a different kind and quantity, and the right booking is a post-construction clean. It is done with our materials and equipment only, because that dust has to be vacuumed up before anything is wiped. To tell which you have, run a finger along a window sill. A grey smear is ordinary dust. A white powder that coats the fingertip is filler or plaster. How the three cleans differ is set out in move-in clean, deep clean or post-construction clean.

When to book the clean

Book it for the day after the last coat at the earliest, and a day later still if the walls needed heavy sanding. The paint is then dry enough for furniture to stand near it, and the dust that was in the air has come down to where it can be removed. A clean done on the painter's last afternoon is a clean done too early. If movers or a new tenant are due, count back from that date: last coat, a day's gap, the clean, then the furniture.

What fresh paint must be spared

New paint is the one surface in the home that should not be cleaned. Tell the cleaners which walls are new.

• Do not wash or wipe newly painted walls. The film is dry in hours but takes weeks to harden, and a damp cloth can leave a shiny mark.
• Keep furniture from leaning against the walls for at least 24 hours. Leave a hand's width behind sofas and headboards for the first weeks if you can.
• Wait before rehanging mirrors and frames that rest flat against the paint. A frame pressed onto a soft film can stick and pull a patch off later.
• Have paint specks taken off floors and glass gently. What comes off each surface safely, and what must not be scraped, is covered in after-builders cleaning.
• Keep the leftover paint, labelled with the room, the colour and the finish, for later touch-ups.

Can an apartment be painted in one day?

Sometimes. Our painting page gives one to several days for a full apartment, and the one-day end of that range belongs to a small, empty home with sound walls and no colour change, where every room can be prepared together and all the first coats and then all the second coats run in sequence. Furniture, repairs, ceilings or a new colour each push it into a second day. The painter will tell you which after the site visit.

Do the ceilings have to be painted as well?

Not always. A ceiling that is clean and evenly white can be left, and the painter cuts the wall colour up to it. But fresh walls make a tired ceiling look grey, and a ceiling with a stain, a crack or a film of cooking grease above the hob will look worse after the walls are done than it did before. Decide ceiling by ceiling, and have it written into the quote, because ceilings are one of the things the price is based on.

Can it be done in one coat to save time?

Rarely with a good result. One coat in the same colour over sound, clean paint can pass in a dim room. Over a different colour, or over filled patches, it looks uneven in daylight, and coming back to put it right costs more than the second coat would have. On our jobs the number of coats is confirmed in the quote, and the aim is full, even coverage.

Should the painting come before or after the other work and the clean?

After the other trades and before the clean. An electrician's or a plumber's opening made after the repaint means patching new paint, and every trade leaves dust. In a home being prepared for a move the order is repairs first, then ceilings and walls, then the clean, then the furniture. The full sequence is in the moving-in maintenance checklist.

Does IHR paint the outside of a villa?

Our painting service covers interior walls. Exterior work is a different job, with different paint, different access and weather to plan round. If you need a boundary wall, a facade or a balcony painted, describe it when you book so that the scope can be confirmed before anything is arranged. Whether a tired exterior needs paint at all, or only a wash, is discussed in facade cleaning, pressure washing or repainting compared.

How is a repaint priced?

There is no published price per room. Painting is quoted by wall area, paint type and wall condition, from photos for a small job or after a free site visit for a larger one, and the figure is confirmed before work starts. Every price includes VAT and there is no call-out fee. Quoted work is paid online by card from My bookings on this website once the price is confirmed. For a quoted job of AED 1,000 or more, 30% is paid in advance by that link, and the balance the same way when the work is finished.