15TH CENTURY STYLE AND ITS KEY CHARACTERISTICS

Dubbed as the 15th Century Aesthetics for Interiors, also called the Middle Ages aesthetics or Medieval style, the period of European history called the Medieval years span the important era from around 500 and 1400 AD. This Pre-renaissance span of time is heavily influenced by religious themes and cathedral architecture. The Gothic interior design is a marvellous example of the classic medieval style. The stately castles and manors of the age also typify the regal influences of Middle Age décor. The distinctive Tudor homes rounded out the final years of medieval era influences.

15th Century(Medieval) interior design starts with walls and floors that are more often that not adorned with flamboyant designs, many-a-times there’ll always be accents of rich wood present. Even if the walls were covered in decorative faux stone wallpaper or realistic cultured stone, it’s possible to achieve the right tone. An easy and prominent way to achieve the medieval style effortlessly would be to include a stone fireplace and hearth. Faux or not, it can go a long way in establishing that medieval castle vibes if paired and styled correctly in a room. The presence of plush and deep toned rugs are often used as a decor accessory or having parquet floorings would surely enhance to the Medieval, 15th Century vibes – leaning and portraying more towards a true antique-like style interior.

The use of fanciful, heavy furniture pieces is also a defining characteristic of 15th Century, Medieval interior design. Usually, it also consists of intricately carved wooden chairs, benches, and tables for an authentic Gothic ambience. Throwing in a large dining room table is enough to establish a medieval theme albeit one that has distinct sophisticated wooden features along with inlay carvings – screams nothing but Gothic, 15th Century feels. Deep colours like blood-red/burgundy, gold, or royal blues are often seen in fabrics and other home decor accessories.

ACHIEVING THE 15TH CENTURY, MEDIEVAL VIBES

WALL AND STRUCTURES:

• Utilises limestone or granite in your walls if available
• If not, Pure whites or slightly off-white walls
• Faux paint techniques or quality laminates can achieve the desired results just as well.
• Oak or other dark wood panelling will give an authentic Medieval look.
• Wooden ceiling beams, in dark, chunky oak, would also be an ideal addition to your Medieval design scheme.

COLOUR SCHEMES:

• Choose mainly deep and rich colours such as deep reds
• Pure whites
• Yellow-gold
• Copper-reddish-brown

OTHER DECOR:

• Cover your windows with thick, long curtains in heavy fabrics like velvets, tapestries and brocades.
• Tapestries also make great wall art!
• To give an even more authentic feel to this theme be sure to include those huge, over the top extravagant-labyrinthine-like rugs into the mix.

THOUGHTS FROM OUR INTERIOR DESIGNER:

An extremely bold and versatile concept, this project has a unique offset black and white checkered tiles that captures your attention the moment you step into the vicinity. Every inch of this place will make you want to examine it as you walk pass something new and interesting. It is a heavy eclectic mix of primarily 15th Century-English influence crossed with Hinduism and a hint of Middle Eastern home decors thrown into the mix? I can’t label it as any one theme – however to my surprise, everything seems to come together pretty well. If I really had to, I would label this theme as a mixed Medieval, 15th century with a hint of modern-fusion home decor accessories – thingamajigs all around the entire house!

The main takeaway has got to be the Black and White checkerboard-like floors. These type of flooring first appeared in the European era around the early 15th century. However, the pattern’s origins lie long before that, in ancient artefacts from Iranian ceramic vessels to Roman paved floorings. The checkerboard pattern dates back thousands of years – staggered squares of light and dark mixes were used as a visual motif on the pottery and textiles of many cultures in the past.

Here’s a picture of the walkway as you enter the house, apart from the bold tiles I feel that the second most extravagant item that would capture anyone’s attention would have got to be the huge geometric divider panels that separates the main walkway from the living room. Highlighted in gold and copper, it’s a sure win for attracting attention and one that leaves visitors murmuring about how crazy the gigantic geometric panel fits right into the mix effortlessly.

COULD YOU ELABORATE A LITTLE ON HOW YOU FINALLY SETTLED ON THIS PARTICULAR SAID THEME?

When I first met my client Sarala, she shared with me all her ideas that she wanted! I meant all! haha. Once I had all the over-the-top input from Sarala, it got me thinking really hard on how I could fuse everything together. It took me awhile to actually digest everything that was said and then I had to churn out a said theme, directed a direction and barely-there-theme(only because at fist, I could not put my finger on it). So from there, we focused on the main details first – which was overall, the main vibes from the 15th Century concept and then slowly fused it with everything else she had in mind.

HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THIS MIXED-ECLECTIC DESIGN CONCEPT?

Basically, it was more of listening to what the client had to say in the initial stages of things than anything else. As the most important factor in my trade as in ID is to offer a direction as to which particular theme to follow as a base – then fusion in whatever else is necessary to the best of my abilities!

WHAT WAS THE PROCESS LIKE?

To my surprise, It was a pretty smooth process – despite the complexity of our initial said ideas of fusing more that one particular theme into a single renovation work – I thought it would be more complex as per usual but luckily for me, it was just like any other project that I had completed once we’d ironed out the fine nitty gritty details, everything – the entire process was an ease.  I even added one more mix into the whole process – which is that in the common bathroom. Using (black and white) baroque wall tiles. Still, sticking to the same said theme, I managed to fuse even this slightly off bathroom style into an entire collective.

Sarala, my client was huge on soft furnishings and antiquities, intricate carpentry and rare decors from all walks of life, especially from the Middle East, to Hinduism – I must say it sounds really chaotic but we both made it work! As nuts as it is just by reading all this, I assure you that you’ll be wow-ed by the end of it!

WHAT WERE THE OBSTACLES THAT YOU FACED? (IF ANY)

One of the few main obstacles that I faced was to meet the agreed deadline – Sarala pre-allocated a narrow 6 weeks for the entire renovation works to be completed. A timeframe that I wasn’t too comfortable with initially, however after trying my best –  I exceeded the agreed timeframe by 1 week. Which to me was already an achievement by itself and my client, Sarala did was impressed by this as well as we had a close working relationship, she didn’t take this extra week to heart and was in fact, very understanding of how rushed things were.

The only other factor I feel that was a real problem to me was controlling my client, Sarala to not over accessorise the entire house! Over adding home accessories and decors could really break this design theme because there was already so much going on, we had to keep everything in check, together – and also to maintain her budget.

After much discussion, we had come together to a compromise as to what was needed and what wasn’t. This has been one of my most enjoyable and memorable projects to date because the moment Sarala walked in and voiced her opinions on what she wanted in her then said future home – I was captivated.