Dubai Hills villa still looks newish but the walls are scuffing and marking, repaint everything or just touch up?
Our Dubai Hills villa is only a few years old so it still looks fairly new, but the walls are starting to scuff and mark, especially the hallways and around the kids' rooms, and spot-cleaning is leaving shiny patches. Is it worth repainting the whole interior at this stage, or should I just be touching up? And if we do repaint, what finish actually holds up better in a busy modern home so we are not back here in a year? Trying not to over-spend on a house that is not old.
2 answers
The honest answer on a house this new is that it is almost never the paint failing, it is the grade of finish the developer used, a flat budget emulsion that marks the moment anything touches it and then goes shiny where you spot-clean, which is exactly what you are describing. So the decision is less repaint-versus-touch-up and more this: if the marks genuinely will not wash off, the sheen has gone patchy from cleaning, or you are about to re-rent or sell, a full repaint of the high-traffic areas is worth it; if it is a few isolated marks, neat touch-ups in the exact same paint and sheen are fine and far cheaper. The upgrade that actually stops you being back here in a year is the finish itself: moving the busy areas (hallways, stairwells, kids' rooms, kitchen) to a proper washable or scrubbable paint over sound prep, so a wipe lifts the mark instead of polishing a patch. On a modern Emaar home you also want the colour and batch recorded so future touch-ups match. A painting team that knows Dubai Hills and these newer villas will tell you honestly which walls need a full coat versus a touch-up, and spec a washable finish for the rooms that take the punishment. Spending on the finish grade, not just the labour, is what buys you the quiet few years.
We did exactly this in ours, full repaint only in the hallway and stairs where the marks would not come off, touch-ups everywhere else, and switched the busy walls to a washable finish. Night and day for cleaning since. Recording the colour and batch saved us later too.
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