Riyadh / Hotels & FF&E
Saudi Arabia's hotel classification criteria require at least one artwork by a Saudi artist in a 5-star Riyadh hotel. We can paint the rest by hand, from the named meeting rooms to a Najdi guest room series.
This page is for the people planning art on a Riyadh hotel project. Some are naming the halls and meeting rooms of a convention floor. Some are fitting out a heritage hotel in Diriyah. Others are converting a property to a new brand by a fixed date, or buying the FF&E (furniture, fixtures and equipment) package.
Nothing leaves for Riyadh until you have approved daylight photos of every finished canvas. The paintings come from PaletteMomento, a hand-painting studio in Dafen Art Village, Shenzhen, China, supplying trade buyers worldwide. Each canvas is painted by one painter alone, on premium linen with no printed base. An order can be a single painting, such as one canvas for one named hall.
Our fastest way to discuss your schedule and price. The written quote follows by email for your records.
WhatsApp: usually an immediate reply.
Email: usually within 12 hours. Monday–Sunday.
support@palettemomento.comOr send your schedule and images through our quote form.
01 / Sort the schedule by source
In Saudi Arabia, hotel classification rules reach into the art schedule. The Ministry of Tourism sets the criteria, and three lines from its hotel and Boutique documents affect your art. The first row follows the English hotel guidance, version 03 from November 2024. The second row follows the governing Arabic text, which applies the naming line to halls and conference rooms. That file is a translation, and the Arabic text governs, so it is worth having your team check the Arabic wording too. The idea has a history. In 2023, the culture and tourism ministries added cultural criteria for hotels, including acquiring works by Saudi artists.
| What the criteria ask | What it means for your art schedule |
|---|---|
Requirement 69 At least one artwork by a Saudi artist. It is mandatory for 5-star and 5-star Luxury hotels. | A separate line, made by a Saudi artist.This piece belongs on its own line, sourced from a Saudi artist rather than from our studio. Once it is chosen, the pieces we paint can follow its colors and motifs. Below 5 stars, the item is optional and adds classification points. Your team and the Ministry decide which piece meets it. |
Requirement 49 Hall and conference room names reflect Saudi culture or regions. This item is mandatory at every star level. | The names can set the painting subjects.The English guidance gives Asir, Umluj and Faw as example names. If you plan paintings for these rooms, the naming plan can double as the subject brief. Section 02 shows a naming plan turned into a subject list. |
Boutique criterion 18 A hotel that uses Boutique in its name needs at least 3 stars. Its room decorations must feature paintings or artworks by local artists or global brands. | Check which room pieces qualify before you plan.This line sits in a separate Ministry document, the criteria for specialty hotel types, also from November 2024. If you plan to use the Boutique name, we suggest asking the Ministry which pieces count before you list studio-painted art for every guest room. |
02 / Brief the named rooms
Large Riyadh hotels can have big event floors. A convention hotel that opened in January 2026 reports nearly 8,500 square meters of event space and 17 meeting rooms. Under requirement 49, hall and conference room names should reflect Saudi culture or regions. If those rooms get paintings, the names can do much of the briefing.
A painting of the Asir highlands inside the Asir room shows guests where the name comes from. It also saves your team a round of subject debates, because the name has already set the theme. Sending the final naming plan before you fix subjects avoids rework, since names can change during design. When the canvases are finished, whoever owns the naming plan can check each one against its region in the daylight photos.
Planning example: three named rooms on one meeting floor. These names, subjects and sizes are made up for illustration. Each subject would be painted from photos you own or license.
All sizes below are image sizes, before any frame goes on.
03 / Set the guest room look
Diriyah sits on the edge of Riyadh. With nearby Wadi Safar, it is planned to hold more than 40 hotels and over 6,500 rooms, Diriyah Company said in 2024. The opening release of the first hotel there, in January 2025, describes guest rooms in Najdi design. It mentions light cream hues, geometric patterns and local art.
The Najdi triangle, also called Alfuraj or Luhuj, is a small triangular opening. Rows of them once ran along the upper mud-brick walls of Najdi houses. A 2026 feature in AD Middle East calls it an unofficial regional emblem. A series built on that motif, with cream grounds and mud-brick tones, feels local without a landmark on every wall. Saudi Arabia's Architecture Characters Map, launched in 2025, names 19 regional styles, including Central Najdi. It gives you and your designer shared words for the brief.
In the daylight photos, compare the corridor band with the bedroom canvas. The triangle geometry and the cream and mud-brick tones should hold from the slim band to the full-canvas triangle above the bed. Whoever set the Najdi scheme is the best person to make that check.
Each canvas in the series starts with a sketch and an underpainting, and our studio painting method page shows the steps after that.
Photographs of a finished framed painting and of our studio materials.
Project notes from one Diriyah heritage hotel describe irregular layouts, "camel-width" corridors and thick mud-brick walls. A size list drawn up for a new tower may not fit rooms like these. Measured wall sizes for each space let us size each canvas to its own wall. If your installer is unsure what to fix into thick mud brick, message us and we can talk it through.
04 / Split by date
Riyadh led Middle East cities by number of hotel projects at the end of June 2026, with 106 projects and 21,666 rooms. Those figures come from Lodging Econometrics data, reported in August 2026. The count runs from early planning to construction, so it points to a steady flow of openings rather than one shared opening day.
Some Riyadh hotels are conversions of existing buildings with a fixed rebrand date. For example, deals for three Riyadh properties were announced in July 2026, two of them conversions. All three are planned to open and rebrand in phases by the end of 2026. If a conversion brings new art, it needs to be on the wall when the new name goes up. When an existing Riyadh hotel rebranded in 2024, its new brand said the renovated rooms and public spaces featured bespoke Saudi-inspired artworks. Splitting your schedule by property and brand date keeps each date clear.
Riyadh Season adds a second kind of fixed date. The 2026 season opens on 21 October and runs for 10 weeks, as the General Entertainment Authority chairman announced in September 2026. The exact opening day came only weeks ahead, but the season itself returns every autumn. If your art is meant for a future season, we suggest marking autumn on your schedule early, since the exact opening day may come only weeks ahead.
05 / Saudi-artist lines and studio lines
Under the Ministry's criteria, your target star grade decides whether the Saudi-artist line is mandatory or optional. If you plan to use the Boutique name, please mention that too, since its criteria cover room decoration. Marking those lines on the schedule keeps them apart from the pieces we paint.
06 / Settle the inland leg
Sea freight for Riyadh always finishes its trip over land, by rail or by truck. We suggest setting your hanging date from arrival in Riyadh, not from the day the ship docks.
Carriers can change routes quickly, so you are welcome to ask us which port your shipment will use. Our Gulf art shipping guide covers the wider routes.
Two steps sit at the Riyadh end of the trip, and both go more smoothly when they are settled early.
07 / Classification, naming and Saber
We do not offer a studio-painted version of a Saudi artist's design as your requirement 69 piece, because our painter, not the artist, would make it. Whether a work counts is for your team and the Ministry of Tourism to decide. Whether a work counts is for your team and the Ministry of Tourism to decide, not for the art supplier.
No, Saudi Arabia's requirement 49 asks for hall and conference room names that reflect Saudi culture or regions, not for art inside those rooms. How many named rooms get a painting is up to your design team. Your quote can list each named room as its own line. That way you can add or drop rooms later without rewriting the brief.
Yes, plan for one: SASO announced that from 1 October 2025, every import needs a Saber consignment certificate before the customs declaration, whether or not a technical regulation applies. Your quote states how the Saber step is handled for a Riyadh shipment. SASO has said the rule covers all imported products, whether or not a technical regulation applies to them. If your own clearing agent will handle the certificate, ask them which documents they need from us, so the paperwork is ready when the goods arrive.
Calm Riyadh landscapes and contemporary, minimal work are two directions Riyadh hotels outside the heritage districts have used. At one, the curator describes guest room art that reflects Riyadh's landscape in soft layers. The other pairs stone architecture in the Salmani style with minimal pieces in its public areas and guest rooms.
Before any painting leaves for Riyadh, we send daylight photos of every finished canvas for your approval, and the balance usually falls due after that. On a Riyadh schedule, we suggest two people look at those photos. Whoever owns the naming plan can check each named room against its region, and whoever set the Najdi scheme can check the triangle series.
Yes, one canvas of a Najdi guest room series can be ordered alone for a Riyadh hotel, since the smallest order is one painting. It counts as a sample order, priced by itself and not credited against the floors that follow. So we suggest the design you will repeat most, painted at its real size. Once the full order arrives, that canvas can still hang in a guest room.
Named halls, Najdi rooms, one inland leg
Tell us who handles the Saber step and where the inland leg ends. If the naming plan is still changing, we can quote the guest room series now and the named halls later.
Our fastest way to discuss your schedule and price. The written quote follows by email for your records.
WhatsApp: usually an immediate reply.
Email: usually within 12 hours. Monday–Sunday.
support@palettemomento.comOr send your schedule and images through our quote form.