Welcome to cabana republic

CABANAS, those swimsuit-changing shelters in circus-stripe fabrics that flutter and flirt and howl “good times,” are no longer restricted to sandy vacation spots. Patio versions are popping up everywhere, and sometimes even the pools and patios are optional. Freethinkers, inspired by home-store display windows and magazine spreads, are taking the cozy cabana -- and the luxury it implies -- indoors.

“People are incorporating cabanas in their home construction plans,” says Ed Leisner of Murray’s Iron Works in Los Angeles. “Cabanas are no longer afterthoughts.”

He recently made an eight-sided, wrought-iron cabana frame with neoclassical-revival columns and French scrollwork for a client. Its place in the home? Shrouding a large dining room table inside a large great room. Cost: $65,000.

Less princely but jazzed-up versions are being used to shade babies, pets and beverage bars, or employed as outdoor nap rooms for grown-ups. The portable structures, sold at stores from Target to Hammacher Schlemmer, can make the smallest backyard feel like a weekend getaway.

Cabanas -- even the word is cute -- are no longer boxed into neat rectangles. They’re now in shapes last seen on geometry tests: octagons, trapezoids and triangles. Their once ho-hum aluminum frames also are getting makeovers with blasts of powder-coated aquas and pinks, complete with architectural details to match the Spanish colonial, Art Deco or modern homes they decorate.

The concept also is being marketed to the slumber-party set through Pottery Barn’s PBTeen line, which sells a netted cabana ($299) and the necessary accessories -- bamboo tumblers and paper lanterns -- and offers tips online (www.pbteen.com) on throwing a tiki party centered on one thought: “Everybody limbo!”

Traditional canvas, which fades and crumbles in the sun, is being tossed aside for weatherproof fibers that look like chenille or sheer silks. Fat cartoony stripes have slimmed to pencil-thin ones in genteel creams and teals. Also competing as cabana coverings are formal patterns accented with braids and tassels.

The breezing boxes were originally used as quick-change bathhouses at beaches in the early 1900s. Later, hotels installed them around pools to woo guests within reach of cocktail servers. Star-saturated Beverly Hills Hotel and the Viceroy Santa Monica made them essential for sealing entertainment deals. A younger generation of high rollers is discovering the pleasures of cabanas at the Hard Rock and Palms hotels in Las Vegas.

The patio cabana was born in the 1990s when the desire to re-create the feeling of a leisurely vacation at home -- call it Resort Takeout -- met up with the need to limit sun exposure.

James Long of Dreamscape Design, a pool and landscape company in Tustin, says the very idea of outdoor rooms is expanding. He has installed backyard shelters called palapas that are shaded by UV-resistant fabrics and woven palm fronds around barbecues and outdoor kitchens. A 6-by-10-foot palapa, inspired by those at Mexican resorts, costs about $4,000. A step-up from these are casitas, mini-houses without walls that hold entertainment systems, recliners and fireplaces.

But Michael Seligman of Bamboo Colony in Los Angeles has come up with what may be the ultimate cabana indulgence: one designed to wrap around a queen-size bed for outdoor napping.

“It’s so decadent,” Seligman says, “that customers see cabanas in our store and say, ‘I don’t know where I can put it, but I have to have one.’ ”