The search for the best interior designer in Dubai begins on Google and ends in a conversation. The search results will give you names. The conversation will tell you whether the name is the right one for your project. Here are the six questions that make that conversation productive.

First: show me a finished project. Not a rendering. Not a photograph styled for Instagram. The actual room, in the actual light, with the actual furniture. A studio that is proud of its work will arrange a site visit. A studio that is not — or that relies on renderings because the finished rooms do not match — will deflect.

Second: who is my designer? The person you meet in the pitch should be the person who designs your room. In many Dubai firms, the senior partner pitches and a junior designer executes. The junior may be talented, but they are not the person whose work you admired in the portfolio. Ask directly, and ask to meet them before signing.

Third: how do you charge? A transparent fee structure — design fee as a percentage of construction cost, or a fixed fee based on scope — is the mark of a practice that does not depend on hidden margins. If the firm cannot explain its fee structure in two sentences, the structure is designed to obscure, not to clarify.

Fourth: what happens when something goes wrong? Every project encounters problems — a delayed shipment, a material that fails on site, a contractor error. The question is not whether problems will arise. The question is whether the studio has the process, the insurance, and the temperament to resolve them without passing the cost or the stress to the client.

Fifth: what is your aftercare programme? A twelve-month aftercare programme — care manual, supplier contacts, warranty management, scheduled revisits — is standard in our practice and should be standard in any serious design firm. If the relationship ends at handover, the studio's incentive is completion speed, not completion quality.

Sixth: can you hold this brief for eighteen months? Villa projects are long. Penthouse projects are long. The studio you choose must be stable enough — financially, structurally, and in terms of key personnel — to stay engaged for the full programme. Ask about staff turnover. Ask about the firm's backlog. Ask how many projects they are running simultaneously. A firm at capacity will say yes to your project and fail to give it attention.

These questions are not designed to favour us. They are designed to surface the structural qualities that distinguish a serious interior design practice from a firm that calls itself one. Ask them of every studio on your shortlist — including ours — and the answers will make the choice clear.