Townhouse interior design ideas for Dubai homes

In many Dubai townhouses the bones are the same: a frontage wide enough for a car port, a plan that runs deep from the street to the garden, a staircase in the middle and party walls on one or both sides. The ground floor holds the living room, a kitchen to one side, a guest toilet and often a maid's room; the bedrooms are stacked above. Daylight arrives at the two ends and fades towards the stairs, and the handover finish is often a pale tile, white walls and a standard wardrobe in each bedroom. Our townhouse interior design page explains how we approach a narrow, tall home; for a large corner unit, see our villa interior design service.

The first wish on almost every townhouse brief is one room from the front door to the garden; the second is somewhere guests can sit without walking through the home. Both are possible if the plan is zoned rather than emptied; our living room design ideas cover the furniture side.

A townhouse has no attic and no spare room, so storage has to be built into the walls, and height is the resource. Our bespoke joinery is made in our own workshop, so fitted pieces for irregular townhouse spaces are practical.

• Floor-to-ceiling wardrobes in every bedroomReplace the handover wardrobe with one that runs to the ceiling and wall to wall, planned inside around long hanging for abayas and kanduras, shelves and shoes. In the master bedroom a wardrobe wall across the full width stands in for the dressing room the plan does not have; see our fitted wardrobes.
• A TV wall that holds thingsA unit with closed cupboards below and a panelled backdrop above stores toys, consoles and paperwork behind doors. Our custom TV wall units are planned with the cable routes and sockets, so nothing trails along the skirting.
• Landings and the stair voidA half-landing with a window takes a bench with lifting lids; a wide upper landing takes shallow cupboards for linen and suitcases.
• The maid's room and the laundryThe maid's room is usually a small room on the ground floor with its own shower room, and without live-in help it becomes a pantry, a study or a laundry. A cupboard with a stacked washer and dryer, a drying rail and an extract fan matters in Dubai, because washing hung indoors in the humid months dries slowly and clothes left outside bleach in the sun.

The upper floors are where the shared walls and the deep plan are felt most: bedrooms against a neighbour's bedroom, bathrooms in the middle with no window, and a landing that is dark by late morning.

The small walled garden is the only part of a townhouse that can grow, and for much of the year it is the most used room in the house.

• Continue the floor outsidePaving level with the living room floor, with the doors as wide as the opening allows, makes the ground floor read as one long space from the front door to the back wall. A pale, textured paving stays cooler underfoot in August than dark stone.
• Shade and a counter on the house sideA slim pergola against the back wall shades the glass doors as well as the table beneath it, which keeps the living room cooler. A short BBQ counter with closed cabinets against the boundary wall keeps cooking smoke out of the kitchen.
• Water if there is roomA plunge pool, a wet deck or a spa pool fits a townhouse strip if it is placed along one boundary; our guide to small pool ideas for townhouse gardens covers the types, the placement and the safety.
• What the community management may requireIn Dubai's master communities the developer or the community management may require a no-objection certificate before structural changes, changes to the facade, garden structures, roof works or anything visible from the street. The rules differ between communities and townhouse types, so we confirm what applies to your house at the site visit and apply for the approvals the community requires.

Because the house is narrow and the stairs are the only route, the sequence matters more than in a villa. Structural openings and their approvals come first, then the services: drainage for any bathroom that moves, AC duct changes and electrical routes for the lighting and the TV walls. Ceilings and partitions follow, then the wet areas are tiled, then the floors, then the kitchen and the joinery, with painting and final fittings last. Joinery is measured once the floors and ceilings are in, anything going upstairs is sized to turn the stair, and we show the whole house in 3D before work starts.