Although calligraphy can be regarded as an art form in itself, it was often used in conjunction with the arts of tezhip (illumination) or ebru (marbling).

Since calligraphy employed a limited range of colours, most often black, the colourful effect of illumination or the use of marbled paper enhanced the appearance of the finished work.
Although the word tezhip literally means "gilding" it refers equally to manuscript decoration in various different colours. Gold paint was prepared by the laborious process of grinding gold leaf with gum arabic, then straining off the gold powder and adding a solution of gelatine according to a specific formula. The suspension thus obtained was applied to the paper with special brushes. But before the stage of applying gold or other colours could commence, the illuminator had to drew the designs, which had to complement the type of script, its scale, and even the contents of the text.
           
Turkish illumination reached its highest degree of perfection in terms of colour and form at the end of the fifteenth century.The designs consisted of geometrical, floriate and zoological motifs, the two latter stylised rather than naturalistic, which were arranged on a field according to certain rules. Another style of decoration was outlining (tahrir) of the motifs with
           
watered-down gold paint to produce a shadowed effect known as halkâri.
The art of illumination remained at its zenith until the early seventeenth century, before entering a period of stagnation, and from the eighteenth century onwards as tastes were increasingly influenced by western art, fell into decline. In the nineteenth century particularly, illumination displays such an artificial veneer of western style that the incompatibility between the writing and the decoration is disturbing. Only from the 1940s onwards, as artists sought to rediscover classical values, did illumination once again recover its original character