Some Find It’s Easy to Get Wrapped Up in Romance of Bed Hangings : Canopies: From regal silk drapes to mosquito netting, strategically placed fabrics make their presence known.

The days have long passed when bed hangings were used solely for protection from drafty rooms, leaky roofs and prying eyes. Canopy beds are popular simply because people like their appearance.

“They make a bed look like something other than just a bed ,” says interior designer Elaine Hankin of Huntington Beach. “They add so much to a room.

“A bed is a bed. I don’t care what kind of pillows and shams are used, it’s still a bed and it needs to be addressed somehow.”

There’s a certain romance in softly flowing fabric. A bed can have fabric cascading down its four posts or gracefully tossed over the canopy frame for an elegant look, says Hankin.

“Little girls like (a canopy bed) because it gives them a private space,” says Peggy Kisielius of Cottage & Castle Interiors in Anaheim Hills. “I think children are comforted by small spaces. (The canopy bed) surrounds them and makes them feel good. It also creates a play area, their own little place.”

But do real men sleep in canopy beds?

Yes, says Lana Barth, an interior designer in Huntington Beach.

“I think men like them,” she says, “especially the more contemporary, tailored ones because they’re very king-like.”

In royal circles, silk bed hangings once denoted rank, wealth and power. “The more (fabric), the higher the status. The king’s would be longer than the duke’s, the duke’s longer than the earl’s, and so on,” Barth says.

“I’m doing a canopy in the Shaker style for a single man right now,” she says. “It’s very straight-lined, no decoration at all. That’s a very trendy look right now.”

Abby Menhennett of Design Associates West in Laguna Beach has seen a variety of canopy beds. “We’ve done some recently with a netting kind of material that gives an ‘Out of Africa’ feeling. And there are beds that are very contemporary, such as tubular chrome or iron, that can also be draped.”

Canopy beds range in price from $270 for a four-poster maple twin bed with detachable canopy to $1,370 for a queen-size oak model at Al’s Woodcraft in Tustin. All the major pattern makers--Butterick, McCall’s, Simplicity and Vogue--carry varied canopy patterns; catalogues from Sears and JC Penney offer ready-made styles.