In Austin, Texas, interiors and lifestyle designer Ken Fulk took his love for canopy beds to the extreme when designing the six suites for the Auberge Resorts Collection’s Commodore Perry Estate. “I’m obsessed with canopy beds,” says the AD100 alum. “We have one in our house in San Francisco and one in our Provincetown home—a curtained bed just feels so safe and cozy.” His favorite sleeping chamber at the Estate is the Laverne Suite, named for a woman who kept the property going in the years before its transformation. “I wanted it to feel like a destination, and the most special jewel box of a room. At first glance it might feel like a lot, but when you’re inside it’s like a giant hug.”
For a recent project, San Francisco–based designer Noz Nozawa outfitted a bedroom for her client’s five-year-old daughter with a kid-friendly version of the classic. “They wanted her to have a ‘big girl’s room’ because she was about to become a big sister,” says Nozawa. So, the designer conceived a playful canopy bed that offers both coziness and the feeling of adventure against a custom decorative wall treatment by artist Caroline Lizarraga that evokes a desert sunset. “The ‘big girl’ aspect is the canopy, but in a Joshua Tree sort of way that brings the outdoors in.”
Traditional elements like these can sometimes bring their own fascinating provenance, as Suzanne Tucker learned when incorporating a canopy bed in her own guest room. “I bought it from an Albert Hadley auction about 20 years ago; it’s an antique that he used in a ‘gentleman’s residence,’” she says. “And it’s exactly how Albert upholstered it. It’s all original—I only freshened up what I needed to.” In fact, the bed—with subtle detailing like gathered rosettes under the canopy, scalloping, quadruple pinch-pleats, and lyrical vine motifs climbing the posts—dictated the room’s overall design. “I love the fact that it’s both masculine and feminine [in style], and that he put it into a client’s home and now it has new life in mine.”
Indeed, there’s nothing quite like the classics. Design afficionados and devotees of the elder Hicks—the godfather of canopy beds—just have to thumb through David Hicks in Colour, a new book from Cabana, to remind themselves how a bedroom can come to life with the proper infusion of fabric. Edited by the younger Hicks, with a foreword by Tory Burch, it offers a fresh perspective on the revered designer’s aesthetic and presents his work thematically by color. “I find it gives a completely different feel to the images, most of which will be quite familiar to fans of my dad’s work.”
