Clay plaster contributes to an Estidama Pearl submittal; it does not earn a rating on its own. The Clayworks range we install in Abu Dhabi holds a Eurofins Indoor Air Comfort GOLD certificate, a Health Product Declaration and Euroclass A1 reaction to fire — evidence that supports the Livable Buildings and Stewarding Materials categories. Its Environmental Product Declaration expired on 8 November 2025 and is being renewed, and we will not submit it as current.
In Abu Dhabi the scorecard comes first
Abu Dhabi rates its buildings through Estidama and its Pearl Rating System, and the rating is not voluntary. Since 2010 every new building in the emirate has had to reach at least 1 Pearl, and government-funded buildings at least 2. The system is published by the Department of Municipalities and Transport, and it is organised into categories that a design team has to answer one by one.
Two of those categories are where a wall finish has anything to say at all. Livable Buildings deals with the quality of indoor and outdoor space, which is where indoor air and occupant comfort sit. Stewarding Materials asks the team to consider the whole life of what it specifies rather than only how the surface looks on handover. What we do not do is name a credit code or a point value against a plaster — those are the assessor's call on the project, not a supplier's claim.
The practical effect is that a finish arrives at an Abu Dhabi project with paperwork attached. A sample board is not enough; the consultant wants to know what the material emits, what is in it, how it behaves in fire, and who says so.
What clay plaster actually contributes
Clay plaster is a mineral and plant-based finish. There is no plastic film sealing the wall, so the surface keeps working after handover: clay takes up moisture when a room is damp and releases it when the air dries, which helps hold an interior between 40 and 60 per cent relative humidity. In a climate where air conditioning runs most of the year, that buffering is doing quiet work in every conditioned room.
There is also nothing in it to off-gas. That is the honest version of the claim — not that the plaster cleans the air, but that it does not add anything to it, which is what an indoor-air credit is actually asking about.
Say it precisely on a submittal and it holds up: natural finishes of this kind contribute to Estidama, WELL and LEED scorecards. No wall finish certifies a building, and any supplier who tells an Abu Dhabi consultant otherwise will be found out at review.
The documents, and what each one proves
Three instruments get confused with one another on submittals, so it is worth being exact. An Environmental Product Declaration measures environmental impact across the whole life cycle and always requires third-party verification. A Health Product Declaration is about human health alone — it discloses ingredients and screens them against hazard lists. A VOC emission or content test report is neither, though it is strong evidence for indoor-air credits.
For the Clayworks clay plasters we install, the register reads as follows. Eurofins Indoor Air Comfort GOLD, issued by Eurofins Product Testing A/S, covering Smooth, Rustic and Tadelakt with full VOC emission test reports — current. A Health Product Declaration for Demi-Rustic and Rustic, HPD v2.3 with full disclosure to 1,000 ppm, valid to 7 February 2028 and self-prepared rather than third-party verified. Euroclass A1 reaction to fire to EN 13501 and EN 15824, with Class 1 and Class 0 surface spread of flame to BS 476-7 and BS 476-6.
The Environmental Product Declaration for the Clayworks plasters, issued by the International EPD System, expired on 8 November 2025 and renewal is in progress. We will not hand it to a consultant as a current document, and you should not accept an expired EPD from anyone else either. Every one of these is free to download from our document library, and the full register with issuing bodies and expiry dates is on our credentials page.
Where clay plaster belongs, and where it does not
Clay plaster is an interior finish for walls and ceilings. It is not used on floors, and it does not go into showers, around basins or in any direct-water zone. That boundary is worth writing into the finishes schedule at concept stage rather than discovering it at snagging.
For wet areas, lime plaster and Microtadelakt take over — specified as a complete sealed build-up of primer, base, body coats and sealer, on walls rather than floors. Where a seamless floor is wanted, microcement is the family that belongs there.
Kept to the right rooms, clay is forgiving in a way coatings are not. Colour runs through the material rather than sitting on top, so a knock shows the same colour underneath, and a marked area can be reworked by hand instead of stripped and recoated.
The rest of the palette in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain
Clay plaster rarely arrives alone. On Abu Dhabi projects it usually sits alongside lime and tadelakt in the wet rooms, microcement where a floor has to run seamless, and sometimes a full earth wall in the public spaces. Our note on specifying rammed earth in Abu Dhabi covers the tender-stage side of that: samples, mock-ups, the 8 MPa acceptance route and why the package belongs with one supply-and-install party.
Al Ain sits within the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and falls under the same rating regime, with a building tradition of its own — we set that out in rammed earth and clay in Al Ain. Across all of it, Earth Layers is the sole authorised distributor and approved applicator for Clayworks in the Middle East, and every coat is applied by artisans on our own payroll.
Getting it into the submittal
The pattern that works is dull and effective: fix the finish by room early, pull the right document for each credit rather than the whole folder, state the status of every certificate honestly, and keep supply and application with one party so the sample, the submittal and the wall all come from the same place.
Send us your finishes schedule through the enquiry page and we will map the Clayworks textures room by room and return the documents that belong with them, or message us on WhatsApp at +971 50 136 0506.