Office Signage Board Design in Dubai: Sizes, Materials, Costs

Reception logos, door plates, wayfinding and culture walls: the signage board design spec we hand to Dubai fit out teams, with sizes, materials and costs.

Fit out contractors in Dubai usually call us about signage board design in the last fortnight before handover, when the paint is drying and the furniture is on a truck. That is the wrong moment. Good office signage is planned from the floor plan, because every door, corridor junction and feature wall needs a decision about size, material and mounting before the walls are finished. This article is the spec sheet we use when a Dubai office asks us to plan its signage board design from scratch.

Start with the floor plan, not the logo

Print the plan at A3 and mark every point where a visitor or a new employee has to make a decision. The lift lobby, the reception desk, the turn into the meeting room corridor, the pantry, the fire exits. Each mark becomes a sign. Then mark the three or four surfaces people look at while they wait: the wall behind reception, the wall facing the lift, the end of the main corridor. Those become the brand pieces. A signage board design that follows this order gets the wayfinding right first and spends what is left on impact.

Reception and entrance

Reception signage is the one piece of office signage everyone photographs, so it carries the budget. The standard reception signage spec in Dubai is a logo in 3D acrylic letters, 100 to 200 mm cap height, either 10 mm clear acrylic with a painted face or brushed stainless steel on a timber or stone feature wall. Backlit versions add a soft halo that reads well in a dim lobby. A reception sign of this type runs from about AED 2,500 for painted acrylic to AED 7,000 for lit stainless steel.

Pair it with a company name on the entrance door in frosted vinyl, and a small suite number plate beside the door at 1,500 mm from the floor. Visitors in a tower corridor read the suite plate before they ever see the logo.

Signage board design for meeting rooms and doors

Door signage is where most offices go wrong. Mixed sizes, mixed fonts, one printed on paper and taped up. Set one standard and apply it everywhere: 250 x 80 mm plates for room names, 150 x 150 mm for icons such as pantry or prayer room, all mounted at the same height on the latch side of the door. Acrylic plates with a stand off from the wall look sharp and cost about AED 90 to 150 each. Sliding plates with a vacant and occupied window cost a little more and save a great deal of knocking.

Glass partitions need frosted bands for privacy and for safety, since clear glass at eye level gets walked into. A 300 mm band at 1,400 mm height with the room name cut out of the frost is the cleanest signage board design for a glass fronted meeting room, and frosted stickers are priced per square metre rather than per room.

Corridors and wayfinding

Interior signs along corridors do a quiet job that nobody praises until they are missing. Directional signs go at every junction, at 1,600 mm height, with arrows on the left for left turns and on the right for right turns. Keep the system to two sizes: 400 x 150 mm for primary directions and 250 x 100 mm for secondary. Wayfinding and safety signs are also where civil defence requirements live, so fire exit, assembly point and extinguisher markers should be ordered in the same finish as the rest rather than bolted on in green plastic afterwards.

A bilingual layout is normal in the UAE. Put Arabic above English on every plate, use the same cap height for both scripts, and choose an Arabic typeface with a weight that matches the Latin one. A signage board design that treats Arabic as an afterthought looks exactly that way to half the people reading it.

Work floor and culture walls

The open plan floor is where office signage shifts from navigation to culture. Desk and team zone markers are the part of signage board design that helps a growing company keep its layout legible. Desk name plates in acrylic or wood, 200 x 60 mm, cost AED 25 to 45 each and make hot desking workable. Larger statements go on the end walls: a mission line in cut vinyl, a mural of the company timeline, or a values wall with icons.

For a wall over three metres wide, printed wall graphics on matte textured vinyl cost less than individual letters and photograph better. Cut vinyl lettering suits shorter quotes where you want the wall colour to show through. Both can be swapped in an afternoon when the message changes.

Materials for interior signs in Dubai

Indoor signs escape the sun but not the air conditioning, the cleaners or the occasional trolley. The table shows what we specify in a signage board design for each type and how long it should last before it looks tired.

Sign type	Material	Mounting	Budget each	Life
Reception logo	Acrylic or stainless steel, 10 to 20 mm	Stud with locators	AED 2,500 to 7,000	10 years
Door plate	5 mm acrylic, printed reverse	Stand off or tape	AED 90 to 150	7 years
Directional sign	3 mm aluminium composite	Flush screw or tape	AED 120 to 200	7 years
Glass frosting	Etched effect vinyl	Applied wet	AED 110 per sqm	5 years
Culture wall	Textured wall vinyl	Applied dry	AED 150 per sqm	3 to 5 years
Desk plate	Acrylic or oak	Freestanding	AED 25 to 45	5 years

Avoid foam board for anything permanent, since it dents at the first knock. Metal and panel boards cost a little more up front and are the reason a reception still looks new after a lease renewal.

Signage board design rules that hold the set together

• One typeface family across every sign, with weights used for hierarchy rather than extra fonts.
• Two brand colours plus a neutral. Door plates and directional signs stay in the neutral so the reception logo keeps its impact.
• Consistent mounting heights: 1,500 mm to the centre of door plates, 1,600 mm for directional signs, eye level for the logo when seen from the entrance.
• Matte finishes under spotlights. Gloss acrylic reflects downlights straight into a visitor's eyes.
• A spare set of door plates with blank inserts, so a new room name does not need a new order.

Multi office companies should write these rules down once and send them to each branch. Reception signage in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah then matches without anyone comparing photos, and the external facade signage can follow the same sheet.

Budget and timeline for a typical Dubai office

A 300 square metre office with reception, four meeting rooms, two corridors and a culture wall comes to roughly AED 9,000 to 18,000 depending on whether the logo is painted acrylic or lit steel. Any signage company in the UAE should be willing to give you that figure line by line. Production takes seven to ten working days after artwork approval, and installation takes one day for the interior signs and a second for the reception logo if it is backlit and needs an electrician.

The trap to avoid is approving artwork before the paint colours and the feature wall finish are fixed. A grey logo that looked right on screen disappears against a grey wall. We ask for the finishes schedule with every signage board design brief for exactly this reason.

How we handle office signage from Ajman

Branding Blitz produces interior signs in house in Ajman and installs across Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, usually at weekends or after hours so the office keeps working. Send the floor plan and the brand file by WhatsApp and we return a marked up plan with a sign schedule and prices. One reception logo is a normal order, and so is a full tower floor. Teams fitting out desks at the same time can look at our desk accessories range so the plates and the signs arrive together. If you want a second opinion on an existing signage board design, send photos and we will tell you honestly what to keep.

Related resources: See our desk accessories and marketing materials pages for specifications, quantity pricing and design options across the UAE.