During the 12th and 13th centuries those who had taken part in the Crusades learned something of luxurious living in the Near East, and as a more secure way of life was becoming possible at home, they began to improve their own living conditions. The castle slowly evolved into the manor house. Household equipment became more elaborate and important, no doubt partly because the women had played a greater part in household management since the absence of the men on the Crusades.

Curtains of finer texture began to replace wooden window shutters or heavy homespun hangings. Tapestries relieved the bareness of the walls and gave additional warmth to rooms, and other textiles and tapestries were draped over chairs and tables, and brightly coloured woven or embroidered cushions were used. The fine wood ceilings of the large rooms were sometimes coffered and often painted in bright colours, particularly in France. The disappearance of much of this colour with the passage of time lends a false austerity to surviving medieval interiors.

A greater number of rooms, serving special needs and giving increased privacy, came into use, although the house was still not planned as a whole. The kitchen, buttery, and pantry were placed at the lower end of the hall beyond a carved timber or stone screen, which, in larger houses, supported a minstrel’s gallery. At the opposite end, there was a chamber, or withdrawing room, perhaps with a solar (upper room) above it, used as a bedroom or as a special apartment for the ladies. A guest room was occasionally provided. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the wardrobe was a room with presses for storing curtains, hangings, bed and table linen, as well as the clothing and materials needed by the members of the household. Here sewing and tailoring were carried on, and the room became a combined workroom and storeroom, furnished with heavy, plain tables and chairs.

In the kitchen, rotating spits and adjustable hooks for suspending cooking pots were fixed into a vast hooded or recessed wall fireplace. Plain but pleasing utensils of wood, copper, and iron were kept on hooks on the walls, and enormously solid tables stood on the stone or tiled floor, which was strewn with sawdust or rushes. In the hall the rushes were mixed with fragrant herbs and helped to absorb some of the dirt, smells, and grease. By the 15th century plaited rush mats were common. The introduction of linen tablecloths resulted in a great improvement of manners and cleanliness at meals.

Ornaments and various luxuries, which had become more common during the time of the Crusades, proliferated in subsequent centuries as commerce with the Near East increased. Household plate, of gold or silver, was frequently displayed on dressers or cupboards as decoration and to impress visitors, and it was not unknown for these possessions to be roped off to prevent pilfering. Indoor arrangements for washing and bathing were considered a luxury. A flat-sided metal bowl was sometimes fixed to the wall of a living room with a swinging ewer or a small cistern with a tap over it and a towel on a hinged rod. Small convex mirrors were hung in the walls as early as the 15th century, such as the one in the background of Jan van Eyck’s “The Marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami.”

The Gothic style first made its appearance in the Ile de France, toward the end of the 12th century. It derived originally from Middle Eastern sources and was developed by Islāmic builders. It came to be widely employed in western Europe, where, for uncertain reasons, it gained the name Gothic by the 17th century. It is characterized by the extensive use of the pointed arch, by spacious interiors, and by walls pierced with numerous windows, often of stained glass. The style had no fixed rules governing proportion, and decoration, generally, was the free expression of craftsmen within the limits of current fashion and the purpose of the building.

Knowledge of Gothic interiors derives from illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings from the few surviving objets d’art. Much use was made of textiles for covering walls, especially tapestries; the principal medieval centres of tapestry manufacture were Paris and Arras (see the article tapestry). European courts at this time were very mobile and moved from place to place: tapestries were remarkably versatile, for they could be taken down and rehung elsewhere. They were employed to partition rooms, and were sometimes suspended under a high roof to act as a ceiling. Rugs and carpets had been brought back from the East by the crusaders and were at first employed as a covering for a divan or, in the case of the finer varieties, as bed and table coverings. The carpet for the floor was introduced comparatively late. Weavers of Saracen origin had settled in Sicily and on the Italian mainland, and they produced all kinds of rich fabrics, such as silk and velvet.

Furniture was not present in such quantities as in later centuries, chairs especially being fairly rare. Tables were long and rectangular, laid on trestles, with benches for seating. At the head of the table, for the principal person of the household, was a straight-backed chair. Chairs, generally, were the subject of a certain etiquette, being reserved for the most important people, and they were often surmounted by canopies. Retainers had to stand; less important members of the household were sometimes supplied with stools. Folding chairs, like the old Roman curule chair, appeared in the 14th century. Although a few chairs had seats and arms stuffed with rushes, it was more common to drape them with textiles and put cushions on the seats. Buffets, often superbly carved, were used as a stand for silver and for serving food.

Medieval bedsteads, with highly carved posts and canopies, were often of great size, and they were customarily occupied by several persons—as well as the favourite dogs, who slept on top. The Great Bed of Ware in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is reputed to have held six couples in comfort.

Goldsmiths’ work was often decorated with enamel, and bronze was similarly treated. The usual technique was the champlevé type, in which the metal is engraved or carved and the spaces then are filled with powdered coloured glass, subsequently fused by firing. At Limoges and in the Rhineland a wide range of objects were executed: quite large works, such as tombs, as well as smaller pieces, such as chasses and reliquaries. Lighting appliances were made of bronze or wrought iron. Those for suspension were usually intended for oil lamps, and standing candlesticks and candelabra were provided with spikes onto which the candle was forced (pricket candle sticks).

Very little decorative pottery was made, although the colourful dishes and vases of Moorish Spain are an exception. Tiles were extensively employed for both walls and floors in houses of the better class, and there was a proverb in Spain to the effect that a poor man lived in a house without tiles. The technique of manufacture was often quite complex and included inlaying with clay of a different colour. The vogue for tiles was imported from Islām by way of Moorish Spain. Chinese porcelain was known in western Europe by the late 14th century but was, of course, extremely rare; indeed, specimens were often mounted in silver in the same way as the semiprecious hard stones such as amethysts, garnets, and peridots.

The Gothic style lingered in England and northern Europe much longer than it did in the south, and many more examples of it escaped destructive wars than on the Continent. The panelled room characteristic of the style and the period has survived more or less intact in England, where panelling with traces of paint can still be found.

Gothic ornament sometimes makes use of motifs similar to those of classical interiors, such as the acanthus leaf and the rosette, but the treatment is very different. The Gothic craftsman liked to abstract certain features of his model and emphasize them in a stylized manner, as in the heraldic eagle, especially as it is used on the reverse of dishes from Moorish Spain and in coats of arms like that of the Holy Roman emperor. It no longer bears any resemblance to the naturally depicted Roman eagle but is stylized, with a geometrically drawn tail. Similarly, the lion has its open mouth, tongue, mane, tail, and claws treated in the same way. Compass work is a marked feature of much Gothic ornament. The cross, for instance, is never a plain cross but is ornamented with geometric motifs; it may represent a reemergence of some old Celtic motifs, which were often based on compass work. Much Gothic ornament is floral and foliate, freely and naturally treated in some cases but stylized in others. Like interiors, paintings were in bright colours. Some of the ornamental motifs to be found in objects intended for interior furnishing are architectural, like the crocket (projections in foliate form), the panelling of chair backs, and the doors of buffets.