“It’s just a few screens.” Most conversations about design pricing start there, and it’s a fair question: from the outside, the deliverable is a handful of images. Here’s what’s actually inside the price.
You’re not paying for the screens
You’re paying for the decisions behind them. Every screen represents choices about what to include, what to leave out, what happens when something fails, what people see first, and how someone who has never used your product understands it in three seconds.
A junior can draw the same screen. The difference is how many times it has to be redrawn after it meets developers, stakeholders and real users.
What’s in the price
- Understanding your business. Your constraints, your revenue model, and what success actually means for you.
- Research. Understanding your users, your market and your competitors before anything gets drawn, so the design solves a real problem instead of a guessed one.
- Ideation. A designer rarely lands it on the first try, and shouldn’t. Several directions get explored, each one refined and narrowed down, before one becomes the final design. You only see the last version; you’re paying for the ones you didn’t see.
- Structure before visuals. Flows and wireframes that establish what goes where and why.
- Every state, not just the happy path. Empty, loading, error, offline, first-time user, power user, and the long text that breaks the layout. The devil is in the details, and it’s the details people feel.
- Skill. Years of craft in typography, hierarchy, spacing and interaction — the part that separates a design that merely looks fine from one that works.
- Responsive versions. Mobile, tablet and desktop, sometimes dark mode and Arabic too.
- Testing and iteration. Showing it to real people and changing what confused them.
- Developer-ready handoff. Organized files, reusable components, specs and availability during the build.
- Experience. Twenty years of knowing which ideas fail, so you don’t pay to discover that again.
There’s also a method behind it. I work through the design thinking steps — empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test — because each one removes a category of expensive mistake before it reaches a developer.
The screens are the small part
On a typical project, drawing the final interface is a fraction of the work. Most of the time goes into research, structure, iteration and the unglamorous edge cases that determine whether the product feels solid or cheap.
What cheap design actually costs
- Rework. Designs that ignore technical reality get rebuilt, and you pay developers to discover that.
- Lost customers. A confusing checkout or sign-up quietly loses a share of every visitor, forever.
- Developer time. Vague files mean developers make design decisions while billing you developer rates.
- Inconsistency. No system means every new feature is designed from scratch, and the product drifts.
- A second project. The most common outcome is paying twice: once for the cheap version, once to fix it.
I say this from experience: a good share of my clients come to me after working with a cheap designer. They hit a wall — the product couldn’t ship, developers couldn’t build from the files, or users didn’t get it — and the project crashed and burned. By the time they call me, they’re paying for it twice.
When cheap is the right choice
Not everything needs a senior designer. A flyer for a one-off event, an internal tool ten people use, or a throwaway landing page for one campaign: templates, AI and junior work are perfectly reasonable there. Spend where design affects revenue, trust or a funding round.
How to tell if a quote is worth it
- Ask what’s included beyond the screens: research, states, responsive versions, handoff
- Ask to see shipped work, not just concepts
- Ask how revisions work, and how many are included
- Ask who does the work and how senior they are
- Compare quotes on scope, not on the headline number
For actual ranges by project type, see UI/UX design costs in Lebanon and Dubai.
The short version
Design is expensive for the same reason a good structural engineer is expensive: most of the value is in the mistakes that never happen. You don’t see them, which is exactly why it works.
Frequently asked questions
Why do designers charge so much for a few screens?
The screens are the output, not the work. The price covers research, structure, every interface state, responsive versions, testing, and a handoff developers can build from without guessing.
Is expensive design always better?
Not necessarily. Price follows experience, scope and demand, not quality by itself — and different designers price very differently, so ranges for the same project can vary significantly. Judge a designer on shipped work, process and how well they understand your business.
Can’t I just use a template?
For simple sites, often yes. Templates struggle when you have a custom flow, a product with many states, or a brand that needs to look distinct.
How do I keep design costs down?
Come with a clear scope, decide who approves work, limit revision rounds, start with the core flows only, and avoid rush deadlines.
Want a clear quote with nothing hidden?
Tell me what you’re building and I’ll break down exactly what’s included. See everything I offer.
Email: [email protected]
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