Almost every interior design discovery call I take eventually arrives at the same nervous question:
“How much is this going to cost me?”
I understand the hesitation completely, because for most people, there is a wide gap between wanting a better home and knowing how to budget for one. Often, this gap is filled with figures that nobody will say out loud until you have already committed to something.
So I am going to say them out loud, the same way I do on my discovery calls.
Before I do, a caveat: These numbers are all-in, which means they fold the furnishing and the renovation into a single per-square-meter figure.
A lot of the cost guides you will find online quote construction only, with furniture treated as a separate problem for later. This is why their figures often look lower, and comparing them gets confusing fast.
I prefer the all-in view because it answers the question people are actually asking: What would it cost to walk into a finished home, with furnishings and everything I need already in it?
With that settled, here is how the budgets generally break down.
Renovation cost per square meter in the Philippines, by budget tier
| Budget tier | Range per sqm | What does that budget cover? | All in cost for a 50sqm unit |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Budget |
₱10,000 to ₱15,000 |
Furnishing from budget brands, with no renovation or only minor work |
₱500,000 to ₱750,000 |
|
Mid-range |
₱20,000 to ₱30,000 |
Furnishing from budget to mid-level brands, plus light renovation such as repainting, replacing some fixtures, and adding custom cabinetry or furniture |
₱1,000,000 to ₱1,500,000 |
|
High-end |
₱40,000 and up |
Furnishing from mid-level to high-end brands, plus major renovation work |
₱2,000,000 and up |
Note: The figures above are loosely based on historical data from our recently completed interior design and home renovation projects (from 2024 to 20026) in the Philippines.
Treat these as your starting figures, as the actual cost you will be spending on will depend on a lot of different factors, such as your location, work scope, your preferences (i.e., do you prefer high-quality, high-performance materials or no?), your contractor of choice, and material and labor costs. Also, always budget for at least a 20% contingency fund.
Two things will help when you read the table:
- The 50sqm column is there because it is the most common condo size I work with (and is actually our minimum), and
- Seeing how a per-sqm rate turns into a real total is what finally makes the figure feel concrete for most people.
If your space is larger, the per-sqm rate usually eases a little, since some costs spread out across the floor area, so a 100sqm project will not simply be double a 50sqm one.
How condo renovation costs compare
There is one adjustment worth keeping in mind if you live in a condo.
Condos tend to sit at the upper end of each tier compared to houses, because the limited working hours, the elevator scheduling, the materials handling, and the building permits all make the same work slower and pricier. Think of it as a gentle nudge upward on whichever row applies to you, rather than a tier of its own.
Hidden costs to build into your home renovation budget
Even an all-in number has its blind spots, and these are the line items that ambush first-time renovators most often. Pad your budget for them before you begin.
- A contingency of 15 to 20 percent, set aside and left untouched, because something almost always surfaces once the walls are open, whether it is old wiring, water damage, or termites that have been working through a beam for years.
- Demolition and the hauling away of debris, usually ₱15,000 to ₱40,000.
- Permits, condo renovation bonds, and a temporary rise in your association dues, which together can add ₱10,000 to ₱50,000 you never saw coming.
- Somewhere else to stay, if the home is unlivable while the work is happening.
- And finally, scope creep, which is basically the changes you decide to make once the work is already underway.
Scope creep is the most common “budget destroyer” in any project. For example, a client sees the new flooring go in and decides the doors should match, or asks to move the kitchen sink while the wall is open, figuring one small change midway through can’t add much. It always adds more than it looks.
This is very important to remember: Every change of mind forces the team to stop, re-sequence what comes next, wait on a new material or a new trade to come in, and sometimes redo work that was already finished. So a single decision ripples outward into BOTH the timeline and the final bill. A handful of those reasonable-sounding yeses is how a ₱500,000 project turns into ₱800,000, and how an eight-week job stretches into 15.
How the interior design fee fits into your budget
There is one more layer these figures leave out on purpose, and that is the design fee itself.
Everything above is what you spend on the home. A designer’s fee is what you spend on the person or team who makes sure the home turns out right, and this fee sits separately on top, priced by the square meter or as a share of the project.
I wrote a whole separate piece on what designers and decorators charge in the Philippines, so if you want the other half of the math, start there. What I will add here is that a good designer often earns you that fee back inside the budget itself, by steering you clear of the expensive mistakes and reining in those mid-project changes before they run off with both your timeline and your money.
Which renovation tier is yours?
None of this is meant to talk you out of the home you want. Hopefully, putting honest numbers on the table does the opposite of scaring you off, because a figure is only frightening while it stays vague. And most of the dread I hear on my discovery calls comes from people imagining something far larger and far foggier than the real cost of what they are after.
Once you can see which tier your project actually falls into, the home you have been picturing becomes something you can plan for and save toward on your own timeline and at your own pace.
And if you would rather not guess at which tier you belong in, that is usually where one conversation with a professional does more than any amount of math on your own.
If you want to talk through your specific project, that is what my discovery call is for. It is where we figure out whether any of our services are the right fit for what you need. In the course of that conversation, I can usually tell you which tier you realistically fall into and roughly what to set aside, before you commit a single peso to it.
I can also walk you through what our design fees would be for the service your project calls for. You can book a free 15-minute discovery call here, and we will talk through it together.
All photos from the Gal at Home Design Studio library.
In writing this article, we used AI assistance for clarity, accuracy, and to align with our editorial guidelines and our commitment to providing valuable home design insights. You can view our full AI Use disclosure here.