Microcement in Abu Dhabi

Microcement across the capital

Looking for microcement in Dubai instead? The same system, rates and crews are covered on our microcement in Dubai page.

Microcement is a thin, polymer-modified cement coating — just a few millimetres thick — trowelled by hand into a smooth, continuous surface. Because it’s so thin, it wraps floors, walls, stairs and even bathrooms in one seamless mineral skin, usually laid straight over what’s already there. No grout lines, no joints: a calm, contemporary finish with a soft, cloudy movement all its own.

RBS is based in Dubai, but Abu Dhabi is home ground too — our crews work across Al Reem, Yas and Saadiyat islands, Khalifa City, Al Ain and the wider capital, with the same materials and the same standard of finish we’re known for. Distance changes nothing about how the surface is built.

One material, whole-home

The reason designers keep specifying it is continuity. A microcement floor can run from the living room through the kitchen and up the stairs; the same surface can climb a wall or line a shower. Fewer visual breaks make a space read larger and quieter — exactly what a modern capital home tends to want.

We apply a professional Italian microcement system, chosen for its colour stability and durability, and finished by our own trained crews. You pick the shade from our colour chart, approve a physical sample of the exact finish, and we take it from there — substrate to sealer.

Microcement or microtopping — one surface, many names

Search for it and you will find it spelled every way: microcement, micro cement, micro concrete, microtopping. In Abu Dhabi and across the UAE they all mean the same thing — a seamless, millimetres-thin cement finish laid over an existing floor or wall — and we apply it under any of those names. The choice that matters is not the word but the build-up: the primer and mesh below, the sealer above, and a crew that has laid hundreds of square metres of it. That is what the prices on this page buy.

Two Abu Dhabi substrates, one honest difference

Most of our capital enquiries fall into two groups, and the substrate underneath changes the job more than the postcode does. Older Khalifa City and Al Ain villas are usually tiled or, in the more finished ones, floored and skirted in marble — a hard, cold, often very sound substrate that microcement bonds to well once it is degreased and lightly keyed, but which needs its threshold strips and marble transitions detailed properly rather than simply coated over. Newer Al Reem, Yas and Saadiyat Island apartments are usually screed or porcelain tile over a concrete slab, in buildings that may still have active construction next door — which matters for a coating curing in place, not just for noise. Neither substrate is harder to work with than the other; they are different jobs, and we tell you which one you have at the site visit rather than after the quote.

How an RBS microcement job runs across the capital

The build-up is identical to any RBS microcement job — what changes on a capital site is the schedule around it, because our crews travel down from Dubai and a site visit is booked rather than same-day:

Day	What happens
Site visit (booked ahead)	Substrate check — tiled, marble or screed — moisture reading, movement joints marked, any nearby construction noted, sample approved
1	Crew arrives, room protected, substrate degreased and primed; mesh embedded at movement points and marble-to-tile transitions; tanking laid first in wet zones
1–2	Base coat one, sanded once cured
2–3	Base coat two, sanded once cured — the structural layer, and the one a rushed crew shortens
3–4	Finish coat one — colour goes in here, hand-trowelled
4–5	Finish coat two — the cloudy, hand-worked movement that reads as microcement rather than paint
5–6	Sealing — two or more coats, immersion-grade in wet zones
6–7	Handover — walkable, not yet at full cure hardness; we set the safe-use window before we leave

Cure time is chemistry, not labour, so it cannot be compressed by sending more people. On an island site with active building work nearby we also watch for transmitted vibration through a shared slab during the early cure — see the failure modes below — and will extend a coat’s cure window rather than seal over a floor that hasn’t settled.

A worked example: a 30 m² Al Reem Island apartment floor

Real numbers, from our published rates, walked through on a common capital job — a 30 m² living/ dining floor in an Al Reem Island apartment, laid over sound existing porcelain tile:

• Scope decided at the site visit. Tiles are sound and flat; mesh goes at the door threshold and one settlement crack in the screed the tiler’s grout had already telegraphed.
• Build-up: primer, mesh at the two movement points, two base coats, two colour finish coats, a wear-grade sealer — dry room, no tanking needed.
• Price: floors start from AED 250/m², so 30 m² starts from around AED 7,500, supply and install — the same rate this page quotes for Dubai, because it is the same crew and the same Italian system driving down the E11.
• Time: five working days including cure. Because the crew travels, the visit and the start date are fixed in advance rather than fitted in same-week — worth asking about early if you have a move-in date.
• What would have changed the number: an uneven screed, a bespoke colour mix, or turning the room into a wet zone — each moves the price and the timeline, which is exactly why every quote follows a site visit rather than a phone call.

Microcement vs tiles, marble, epoxy and polished concrete in an Abu Dhabi renovation

Marble earns its own column here — it is the default finish in a large share of the capital’s older villas, and it is the material microcement most often replaces or runs alongside during a renovation:

	Microcement	Tiles	Marble	Epoxy flooring	Polished concrete
Added thickness	~2–3 mm	8–12 mm plus adhesive bed	15–20 mm slab	A few mm, poured	None — the existing slab is ground down
Joints / grout lines	None	Yes, grout lines throughout	Yes, at every slab edge	None	None
Goes over existing floor	Yes, straight over sound tiles or marble	Only with demolition or a height allowance	No — this is the original floor, not an overlay	Usually needs a bare or primed substrate	No — needs the raw slab exposed
Feels underfoot	Warm, matte	Cold, glossy or matte	Cold, often glossy	Cool, glossy or matte	Cool, satin
Wet-zone use	Yes, with tanking + immersion sealer	Yes, standard bathroom material	Yes, but etches and stains without regular sealing	Rare in wet rooms	Not typical for showers
Starting price in Abu Dhabi	From AED 220/m² (walls) / 250/m² (floors)	Quote-only — not a system we install	Quote-only — not a system we install	Priced after a site visit	Priced after a site visit
Best fit here	A renovation that wants one seamless, warmer surface without ripping out the slab	New-build floors where grout lines are no concern	A villa that wants to keep and maintain its original stone	Garages, workshops, showrooms wanting a poured resin floor	Slabs meant to stay exposed, not covered

We don’t lay tiles or supply marble, so those prices are left blank rather than guessed. Epoxy and polished concrete are priced after a site visit for a different reason: we do both, but neither has a published per-m² rate — see metallic epoxy and polished concrete for how each is actually quoted.

Failure modes we actually see in Abu Dhabi microcement jobs

Every one of these is preventable, and each is something we now check for on a capital site visit because a job — ours or someone else’s — was caught out by it once:

• Cracking that tracks a neighbouring construction site, not just the substrate. On Reem, Yas and Saadiyat, a tower still under build-out next door can transmit low vibration through a shared slab during a coat’s early cure. Mesh at the substrate’s own movement points doesn’t fix vibration coming from outside the room — the real fix is checking for active piling or heavy plant nearby before fixing a schedule, and lengthening the cure window between coats where it can’t be avoided.
• A haze at the balcony door that isn’t a sealing fault. Coastal, salt-laden air condensing on a cool, air-conditioned surface right at a sliding door can look exactly like an under-cured patch. It’s dew, not a defect — the fix is running the AC through the full cure window on hand-over day, not re-cutting a floor that was never actually wrong.
• A marble transition strip that lifts within a year. Common in part-renovated villas where microcement meets an untouched marble hallway: if the transition detail isn’t mechanically fixed and allowed to move independently of both materials, the strip telegraphs the marble’s temperature swing and lifts at the seam. We now detail every marble junction as its own line item, not an afterthought to the main floor.
• Sealer dulling fastest on the splashback behind a stove or hob. Heat and oil attack the sealer, not the cement underneath — the same story in every kitchen, capital or otherwise, and why the wall right behind a hard-used gas hob is detailed for that heat.
• Colour that reads patchy under a west-facing Corniche sunset. Caused by mixing finish-coat batches on site instead of pre-blending enough material for the whole wall or floor in one batch — a process discipline issue, not a material fault, and one raking evening light finds instantly.

More microcement guides

• Microcement pros and cons: the honest list
• Does microcement crack?
• Microcement over existing tiles
• How long does microcement last?
• What is microtopping (micro concrete)?