Interior design
How to choose an interior designer in Cyprus
Real fee ranges for interior designers in Cyprus, what moves them, and which registrations to check before a project starts.
8 min read
Photo: heba alwahsh on Pexels
Elena covers interior design, furniture and lighting for Cypriot homes. Her focus is the gap between a scheme drawn for a northern European climate and one that survives this light, this heat and, near the coast, this salt.
Published
"Interior designer" is not a protected title in Cyprus, and there is no register of interior designers to check against. What is regulated is narrower and more useful: any drawing submitted for a planning or building permit has to be prepared and signed by a professional registered with ETEK. So the first question about a studio is not what it calls itself but what the project actually needs — a furnishing and finishes scheme, or a set of permit drawings — and whether the studio holds, or can name, the registration that covers the second. The second question is how the fee is constructed, because in this market that varies more than the fee itself.
What can actually be verified
Four things can be established from documents before a deposit is paid.
- The trading entity. The name on the proposal should resolve to a company or a registered business name at the Registrar of Companies, and the VAT number should appear on the quotation rather than turning up later.
- ETEK registration where it is needed. For anything that alters structure, forms or moves an opening, changes the external appearance, encloses a veranda, extends floor area or changes the use of a space, the permit drawings come from a registered architect or civil engineer. The studio either employs one, works with a named one, or does not do that part of the job.
- Professional indemnity insurance. A certificate with dates on it, covering the period of the project rather than the period of the sales conversation.
- Whether the portfolio is built work. Photographs of a completed room, a three-dimensional render and a supplier's catalogue image look similar on a phone screen. Asking which projects were built, in what year, and which contractor built them separates the three quickly.
What cannot be verified from outside is taste, judgement and whether a studio will still be responsive in month five. This directory records registrations, services and coverage as recorded, each with the date it was checked. It carries no reviews, ratings or testimonials, so nothing here should be read as a ranking of design quality.
Registrations that matter
The regulated boundary in a Cyprus interior project runs between decoration and building work, and it is sharper than most clients expect.
Specifying finishes, joinery, lighting positions, furniture and colour requires no registration. Changing a plan requires a permit, and a permit application goes to the local authority and the Department of Town Planning and Housing with drawings signed by an ETEK-registered professional. A studio that proposes removing part of a wall in an apartment and does not immediately raise the question of who will draw and sign it is either assuming someone else will pay for that or has not thought about it.
Three further points are worth confirming in specific circumstances. If the studio will hold the contracts with the trades rather than the client holding them, the arrangement is closer to contracting than to design, and the insurance position changes accordingly. If it will import goods on the client's behalf, its own VAT registration matters for how the invoices work. And in a multi-occupancy building — increasingly common in Limassol, where high-rise development has raised the volume of balcony and facade work — the management company's own rules govern anything touching a common element, which is a permission separate from any public authority.
Questions to ask
Who draws and signs anything structural, and who pays for it
A named ETEK-registered architect or engineer, quoted as a line item. Discovering at drawing stage that this sits outside the fee is the single most common cause of a budget moving.
What the fee is a percentage of, and who sets that figure
A percentage of the construction and furnishing budget is a normal basis. It stops being a comparable basis when the same studio also sets the budget.
Whether the studio takes a margin on what it specifies
Many studios in Cyprus are attached to, or supplied by, furniture and finishes retailers, and the design fee is partly carried by that margin. That is a legitimate model. The question is whether trade discounts are passed through, retained, or shared, and the answer belongs in writing.
How many site visits are included
Supervision is where design proposals diverge most. A fixed number of visits with a stated rate beyond it is comparable; "as required" is not.
What happens when a specified item has a long lead time
Imported case goods and upholstery mostly arrive by sea, which puts delivery on a shipping schedule rather than a workshop's. The proposal should say who carries the delay and whether substitution needs approval.
What is handed over at the end
A drawing set, a finishes and furniture schedule, and clarity on who owns the drawings if the studio is replaced partway through.
What a good quote looks like
Fees are quoted on several different bases in Cyprus — a percentage of project value, a rate per square metre, a fixed sum per room or per package, or an hourly consultation rate — which is why two proposals for the same flat can look nothing alike.
A proposal worth comparing separates the concept stage from the technical stage, states the number of revisions included at each, itemises the furniture and finishes schedule as its own deliverable, prices site supervision explicitly, and carries an exclusion list. The exclusion list is the most informative part: permit drawings, structural engineering, samples, delivery and installation, lifting and hoisting, and making good are all commonly outside a design fee, and a proposal that names them is easier to trust than one that stays silent.
One Cyprus-specific line to clarify: the reduced VAT rate available on a primary residence is defined by conditions and area limits set out in the VAT legislation and applies to construction work rather than to loose furniture. A quotation that mixes both should say which rate applies to which line.
Warning signs
Renders presented as completed projects is the one that costs most. A render shows what was drawn; a photograph shows what was buildable within the budget, by a contractor, in a real room with a real ceiling height.
Others worth pausing on: a fee expressed only as a percentage of a budget the studio controls; a refusal to state how supplier margin is handled; no exclusion list; a deposit requested before a written scope exists; and specification without an access check. That last one is concrete rather than theoretical. On the hillside plots around Peyia, steep access roads limit the size of delivery vehicle and crane that can reach the site, and a single-piece stone worktop or an oversized sofa can be undeliverable to a house it was designed for.
Timing is also a signal. In Ayia Napa and Protaras, where the building stock is predominantly seasonal accommodation, refurbishment is concentrated between November and March, and a studio proposing a holiday-let scheme with a spring completion is proposing to work through the letting season.
Common questions
Does an interior project need a permit?
It depends entirely on whether the plan changes. Finishes, furniture, lighting and joinery within an existing layout generally do not. Forming or enlarging an opening, altering structure, enclosing a veranda, changing the external appearance or changing the use of a space generally does, and the drawings for that application come from an ETEK-registered professional.
Are there reviews or ratings of interior designers on this site?
No. Listings record what has been checked and when — registrations, services, districts covered — and nothing else. There are no reviews, ratings or testimonials anywhere in this directory. The interior design category page and the wider services index are organised around what a document can prove, which is a deliberate limitation rather than a gap waiting to be filled.
How early should a designer be appointed?
Before the layout is fixed, and well before first fix. In the 1970s to 1990s apartment blocks that make up much of the stock in areas such as Strovolos, where rewiring and replumbing dominate renovation work, socket positions, lighting circuits and any relocation of soil pipes are decided at first fix and are expensive to revisit afterwards.
Does coastal location change the specification?
Materially. In directly exposed coastal areas such as Kato Paphos, salt-laden air makes galvanised and marine-grade fixings standard, and it shapes choices that look purely aesthetic — ironmongery, metal furniture frames, mirror backing, external joinery and anything stored on a balcony.
Inland, the constraint is different rather than absent. Nicosia has the widest temperature range on the island, and that drives insulation and shading specifications more than it does material choice. In practice it decides where glazing needs external shading rather than internal blinds, how much a west-facing room can carry dark or heat-absorbing finishes, and how quickly textiles and timber finishes in a directly lit room will fade. A studio that treats a Nicosia flat and a coastal apartment as the same specification problem has not looked at the orientation of either.
Who holds the contracts with the trades?
Either the client or the studio, and the difference matters. Where the client holds them, the designer specifies and inspects but does not carry delivery risk. Where the studio holds them, it is acting as a contractor, and the insurance and payment terms should reflect that.
Do studios work outside their own district?
Most will, with travel time reflected in the fee or in the number of site visits offered. For a scheme requiring frequent supervision, a studio already working in the area is usually the more practical choice, which is why coverage is listed district by district and town by town.
Interior design studios in Cyprus
8 companies covering this area.
Polart Construction
Strovolos Iii, Nicosia
Polart Construction is an architecture practice in Strovolos Iii, in the Nicosia district. Recorded services include planning submissions, drawings, site supervision.
- Planning submissions
- Drawings
- Site supervision
Karyatides
Strovolos, Nicosia
Karyatides is an architecture practice in Strovolos, in the Nicosia district. Recorded services include planning submissions, drawings, site supervision.
- Planning submissions
- Drawings
- Site supervision
Andreas Vlittis
Paralimni, Famagusta
Andreas Vlittis is an architecture practice in Paralimni, in the Famagusta district. Recorded services include planning submissions, drawings, site supervision.
- Planning submissions
- Drawings
- Site supervision
Nicolaides Viana Partnership
Limassol Centre, Limassol
Nicolaides Viana Partnership is an architecture practice in Limassol Centre, in the Limassol district. Recorded services include planning submissions, drawings, site supervision.
- Planning submissions
- Drawings
- Site supervision
P. A. Constructions Ltd.
Engomi, Nicosia
P. A. Constructions Ltd. is an architecture practice in Engomi, in the Nicosia district. Recorded services include planning submissions, drawings, site supervision.
- Planning submissions
- Drawings
- Site supervision
Andreas S. Hadjizacharias Ltd
Agios Nikolaos, Limassol
Andreas S. Hadjizacharias Ltd is an architecture practice in Agios Nikolaos, in the Limassol district. Recorded services include planning submissions, drawings, site supervision.
- Planning submissions
- Drawings
- Site supervision
Uds Architects
Limassol Centre, Limassol
Uds Architects is an architecture practice in Limassol Centre, in the Limassol district. Recorded services include planning submissions, drawings, site supervision.
- Planning submissions
- Drawings
- Site supervision
Fabretti Construction
Agioi Omologites, Nicosia
Fabretti Construction is an architecture practice in Agioi Omologites, in the Nicosia district. Recorded services include planning submissions, drawings, site supervision.
- Planning submissions
- Drawings
- Site supervision
Sources
- Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber (ETEK) — register of registered professionals — retrieved 2026-07-24
- Department of Town Planning and Housing — planning and building permits — retrieved 2026-07-24
- Department of Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property — retrieved 2026-07-24
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