You are closing a hotel art package in Riyadh, Dubai or Doha against a fixed handover, and the specification says originals, not prints

You are the FF&E procurement agent, the owner's representative or the interior design studio on a hotel in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, Doha or one of the Red Sea and giga-project sites, and the art package is one line among hundreds in a schedule that has to close before a handover date that will not move. The consultant has specified original hand-painted canvas, not prints. The lobby needs one or two very large statements, the guest rooms need one look repeated across 150–300 keys, and the owner's side wants to see the work before it ships. With 385 hotel projects in the Saudi pipeline, 105 of them in Riyadh, and a further 105 in the UAE at the start of 2026 ¹², the suppliers you shortlist are being asked the same questions by several agents at once, and the ones worth keeping answer them on the page.

This page is written for that chain: agent, consultant, owner's rep. If you are fitting out a private palace or a family majlis, the approver, the order size and the finishes differ; read Villas and whole-house projects. If you are running a brand-standard guest-room programme outside the Gulf, Hotel guest-room programmes is the sharper page, and Lobby statement art covers one-off oversized pieces bought on their own.

Most hotel-art suppliers are print houses, and their own buying guides say so: for multi-room projects they recommend giclée on canvas, on consistency across hundreds of rooms and on cost ³. At 200 keys that is the cheapest way to hold one look, which is why the offer keeps appearing in tenders. It fails the moment the specification says hand-painted original and the owner's representative looks at a sample under a lamp.

What we do: every one of the 1,455 works in our catalogue is painted by hand on canvas, to order, by painters who train inside Siji Art Hub's exhibition programme in Foshan (more than 50 exhibitions, with professors of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts among the exhibitors). There are no prints and no stock. Each piece is signed by its painter and ships with a certificate of authenticity, so the same sentence can go into the specification, the room data sheet and the hotel's art register without qualification. Because nothing is printed, a design can be repainted at 61 × 51 cm for a suite vestibule and at 203 × 153 cm for the suite itself, and both are originals.

If the tender asks you to prove it, order a sample first. The minimum order is one piece, and the sample follows the same route as the package (brief, quote, progress photos, delivery), so the agent sees the finish, the signature and the certificate before committing the balance.

The usual failure is split sourcing: a gallery for the lobby, a print house for the rooms, a framer in between, three lead times and three sets of paperwork on one schedule. The rooms end up looking like a different property from the lobby, and the agent carries the reconciliation.

What we do: one source, one catalogue, one paperwork trail. For the guest rooms, choose three or four source works and we repeat them across room types by resizing and by changing the palette, so the rooms read as one family without 200 identical canvases. Listed sizes run to 203 × 153 cm (80 × 60 in) for most vertical and horizontal works and 127 × 254 cm (50 × 100 in) for panoramic; anything larger is painted to order, and pieces over two metres and panoramic formats are normal work for the studio, not exceptions. How a lobby wall is specified to an elevation, split into panels and moved past the goods lift is on lobby statement art; the point for the agent is that the lobby statement, the corridor verticals, the restaurant and boardroom pieces go on the same quote and the same paperwork as the rooms.

The catalogue has the depth for a whole property: 557 works are tagged Lobby & Reception, 681 Guest Room & Suite, 447 Corridor & Circulation, 525 Restaurant & Bar and 224 Meeting & Boardroom. Within those, 286 lobby works are tagged Bold and 404 guest-room works Peaceful, which is the split a hotel schedule usually asks for: a statement downstairs, quiet upstairs.

The art package is usually the last trade in and the first one squeezed. The agent needs a date in writing, not a range in weeks, and needs to know what happens to that date when the owner's side takes ten days to comment on stage photos.

What we do: a single piece takes about one week to paint and 3–7 days in transit, 10–13 days door to door, with free insured worldwide shipping by DHL, FedEx or USPS. A room-count package is not 200 times that. Painting is scheduled in batches by zone or by floor, and the timeline for the whole project is confirmed per project and committed in writing at quotation, with the approval windows written into it. Quotes go out within one business day of a complete brief, so the art line can be priced in the same week as the rest of the schedule.

Two things keep the date honest. First, approvals are staged: you receive progress photos or video per batch and sign off stage by stage, so a query on batch two does not stop batch three. Second, shipments can leave in batches, so guest-room pieces can be on site and installed while the lobby statement is still being framed. If your programme only has float at the end, send the install date and the sequence you need, and the schedule is worked back from it before you sign.

If your content brief excludes nudity, allows figurative work only by exception, leans towards geometric, botanical and landscape subjects, and asks for gold or warm-metal framing in public areas, a supplier whose catalogue leads with figurative work spends the tender explaining what it will not send, and the agent spends it checking.

What we do: the catalogue is organised by ten themes, and Figurative & Human is a separate filter that is never applied by default, so a schedule can be built entirely from the other nine. Within the lobby tag alone there are 167 Floral & Botanical works, 137 Landscape and 89 Geometric; in guest rooms 288 Floral & Botanical, 206 Landscape and 97 Geometric. Textured & Plaster (112 works tagged for lobbies, 160 for guest rooms) gives relief that reads under low, warm hotel lighting, and the gold, beige and cream colour families sit with stone floors and brass fittings. Gold is one of our five standard frame finishes (gold, silver, black, white, wood), alongside rolled and stretched.

Where a brief asks for Arabic pattern or explicitly Islamic geometric motifs, note that Cultural & Folk is a thin theme (37 works tagged for lobbies). We steer those requests to Geometric and Textured & Plaster, or to a palette variation of a geometric work in the scheme's colours. The market pages for the UAE and Saudi Arabia will carry the fuller content notes for each country as they are published.

Owner's representatives are asked to sign off art they have only seen as a JPEG, and a package priced ex-works leaves the agent reconciling freight and framing later. Both produce the same complaint: the number in the schedule was not the number on the invoice.

What we do on approval: you approve at each stage, not once at the end. Progress photos or video are sent from the studio as the work advances, the owner's representative or consultant comments, and the painter adjusts before the next stage. Colour references (a fabric cutting, a stone sample, a RAL or Pantone number, a photograph of the wall under its own lighting) are matched at the painting stage rather than corrected afterwards. Sign-off on the finished piece happens before it is packed.

What we do on the quote: there are no public prices; every project is quoted within one business day against the schedule you send. The quote states each piece, its size, its finish (rolled, stretched, or framed with the frame colour named) and the shipping, which is free and insured worldwide, so the line the agent enters is the line that is invoiced. Volume pricing applies from ten pieces, and a sample of one is quoted on the same basis so the tier is visible before the package is placed.

1. Brief. Send the art schedule or a room list with wall sizes, quantities per room type, finish per zone, the content brief and the install date. A designer's mood board or scheme references are enough to start.
2. Quote, within one business day. Piece by piece: reference code or variation, size in cm and inches, finish, quantity, tier. Shipping is included and insured.
3. Sample, optional. One piece, 10–13 days door to door, so the consultant and owner's representative see finish, signature and certificate before the balance is placed.
4. Programme confirmed in writing. Batches by zone or floor, the approval windows the owner's side needs, and the delivery sequence against your install date.
5. Painting and stage approval. Progress photos or video per batch; comments go back to the painter; the next stage starts after sign-off.
6. Finishing. Rolled for local framing, stretched on bars, or framed in gold, silver, black, white or wood, as the schedule specifies per zone.
7. Shipping, 3–7 days. DHL, FedEx or USPS, insured, to the site, the agent's warehouse or a nominated consignee, in batches if the programme needs it.
8. Paperwork. Every piece signed by the painter and accompanied by its certificate of authenticity, ready for the hotel's art register and the handover file.

The first email is the last clarification round if it carries the following. None of it needs to be final; a range is fine where the design is still moving.

• Room list by type: number of keys per room type, pieces per key, and the public-area positions (lobby, reception, lift lobbies, corridors, restaurant, bar, spa, boardroom).
• Wall sizes: the wall or the intended artwork size for each position, in cm or inches; a marked elevation is ideal, a photo of the wall is enough.
• Finish per zone: rolled for local framing, stretched, or framed and in which colour; note where a frame will be fitted locally.
• Content brief: excluded subjects, preferred themes, and any operator or owner rules on figurative work.
• Colour references: fabric and stone samples, paint codes, or a scheme board, so palette variations are painted to your finishes.
• Catalogue references: codes such as AA#740 or TA#1034 for the look you want, or 'similar to' if you want us to propose from the cuts below.
• Dates and route: install date, any staged handover, and whether goods go to site, to the agent's warehouse or to a nominated consignee.
• Approval chain: who comments on progress photos and how many days each round needs, so it can be written into the programme.

Use the request-a-quote form with the hospitality role preselected, or send the schedule as it stands.

The cuts below are the entry points Gulf hotel schedules use most, each with a live count from the catalogue. Every work in them can be resized to the wall and repainted in the scheme's palette, so treat them as starting points, not fixed pieces.

• Lobby and reception statements: 95 works are painted in panoramic proportions, templated to 127 × 254 cm (50 × 100 in) and painted larger to order, for reception back walls and double-height feature walls. Abstract works in gold, black and cream lead the framed-gold statements.
• Guest rooms and suites: Textured & Plaster (160 works) gives relief that reads under bedside lighting and repeats cleanly across floors in different palettes; pair with the Peaceful cut above for the bed wall and a smaller Floral & Botanical or Landscape piece for the vestibule.
• Corridors and lift lobbies: 435 vertical works tagged Corridor & Circulation; a series of six to ten in one palette, repeated by floor, is the usual order.
• Restaurant, bar and all-day dining: 172 works tagged Cozy & warm for restaurants and bars, mostly Abstract, Impressionist and Colorful.
• Boardrooms and meeting suites: 79 Geometric works tagged Meeting & Boardroom, mostly Abstract, Textured & Plaster and Contemporary Minimalist.

Palace and majlis projects. The same catalogue, the same gold, beige and cream cuts and the same stage-photo approval serve a private palace or a majlis wing, but the buyer is different: a family office, a private client's designer or a main contractor, ordering ten to sixty pieces with one approver and a preference for framed and master-work pieces rather than a repeated series. That buyer is served on Villas and whole-house projects, and the senior partnered artists' master works, kept as painted and carrying provenance and exhibition history, are described on the commissions page.

Hotels in Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Egypt. The process on this page is the same; the content briefs and framing conventions vary by country, and the market pages carry those notes as they are published. Where a group is rolling one scheme across several properties in the region, nothing is stocked and nothing is discontinued, so the codes and approved colourways from the first property are painted again for the second and quoted from the same references.