Twin Size Canopy Bedroom Sets

Canopy beds like these were — and still are — a warm and wonderful accent for any bedroom, turning the space in a cozy haven.

Here, take a look back at this collection of gorgeous designs and styles of vintage canopy beds that were popular in the seventies — their retro revival period, centuries after they first became popular in England and France.

Some of the examples below are some classic and elegant, others modern and breezy, and many are fabulously frilly.

If you have always loved the 1970s and want to bring back a piece of that era, the canopy bed is the perfect choice. It is truly a timeless piece of home décor, no matter what century you're in.

Beautiful vintage canopy beds from the 1970s (8)

A look back at some beautiful vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

Article by Carleton Varney, interior designer (1972)

The four-poster bed with a canopy, known as a tester bed, is back in a big way. At the recent furniture market in Chicago, the canopy bed look was bigger than life.

It really has never been out for some people, and reproductions of Williamsburg canopy beds have been available for years. Sometimes the fabric canopy is straight with a valance border, and other times the canopy has a bowed shape.

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

The history of the canopy & their seventies revival

Canopy beds — or tester beds — have been around for centuries, as far back as the 15th century in England and France.

In 17th century decorating, there were many Jacobean designed beds with canopies. and in those days without central heating, the fabric, hung on the top and generally at the bed sides, too, was used to keep out the cold drafts.

The tester or canopy bed was also used in tropical climates: the canopy fabrics were not damasks, heavy velvets or chintz, but were sheer fabrics, oftentimes mosquito netting, to keep out insects.

Old-fashioned canopy beds from the 70s

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

Every little girl wants a canopy bed, so the story goes, and I have to admit that little girls dig the white-painted canopy bed with white organdy top and white ruffled valance.

And when little girls grow up, they want canopy beds, too. I have planned many rooms with canopy beds, not only in pink and white, but also in green and red and yellow and orange — and in just about every kind of fabric on the market.

Tall canopy bed in blue in a room with a high sloped ceiling (1973)

I have decorated many beds with canopies of damask designed fabrics or of bright flowered chintz, lined with colorful stripes.

MORE: See a '70s model home: A pretty, practical, family-friendly house

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

Different ways to use canopy beds

I have seen tent canopy beds of a campaign design for a young boy's room, the canopy being of bright plaid fabric. And I have seen many charming traditional bedrooms with canopied beds.

One room with a tester bed with a soft pink valance from Heritage's "Tour de Fr

Cozy yellow and pink vintage canopy bed for a master bedroom (1972)

ance" collection also featured a cozy corner with a small fireplace. and it was an ideal hideaway for reading or dining as well as restful sleep.

The nylon shag carpet was pink touched with brown, and the bedspread was soft rose on white cut velvet.

Old-fashioned wooden four-poster bed with short canopy (1970)

Wood and other materials for the frame

The bed frame of a canopy or tester bed does not always have to be walnut or mahogany.

Once I designed an ultramodern room which had a stainless steel canopy bed — the frame was steel and the canopy was of a modern geometric design linen.

DIY canopy for a bed made with flowery sheets (1973)

The frame of a canopy bed can be painted white and trimmed with apple green, black trimmed with gold, or any colors you wish to coordinate with your decorating scheme.

If you look carefully, you may find a good old tester bed in a thrift shop and can paint and decorate it yourself.

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

Iron bedframe with high curtained surround (1970s)

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

Romantic old-fashioned canopy bed in earthy colors

Side-by-side matching twin canopy beds

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

Popular vintage Sears canopy bed coordinates

Vintage pink canopy beds from 1978 catalog (5)

Vintage pink canopy beds from 1978 catalog (8)

Vintage yellow canopy bed and 70s teen bedroom decor

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Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

Blue canopy bed with upholstered top

Bedroom furniture set with gilded aceents

MORE: Remember these vintage gold-edged bedroom furniture sets from the '60s?

Vintage Sears canopy beds from 1977 (5)

Vintage pink canopy beds from 1978 catalog (1)

Vintage Sears canopy beds from 1977 (4)

DON'T MISS: Retro 1970s sheet sets with bright & bold colors and bonus flower power

Master bedroom canopy beds

Vintage 70s master bedroom canopy bed - 1973

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Chessie the Kitten bedding pattern

Vintage pink canopy beds from 1978 catalog (2)

Cute corner canopied nook

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

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Floral country-style adult canopy beds on beige backgrounds

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

Cute calico canopy coordinates for a cool kid

Vintage pink canopy beds from 1978 catalog (7)

Priscilla blue canopied bedding set from the 1970s

Vintage Sears canopy beds from 1977 (1)

Doll-character themed bedding from the 1970s

Vintage pink canopy beds from 1978 catalog (3)

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Vintage 1970s Holly Hobbie canopy bed in pink or yellow

Retro '70s guest or master bedroom with blue, yellow and white wallpaper & canopy

Dark wood with bright yellow bedroom decor

Old-fashioned bedroom with a white canopy bed and pink satin bedspread

Beautiful vintage canopy beds from the 1970s (11)

Beautiful vintage canopy beds from the 1970s (12)

Beautiful vintage canopy beds from the 1970s (13)

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Pretty gingham canopy beds for kids

Vintage Sears canopy beds from 1977 (3)

Beautiful vintage canopy beds from the 1970s (3)

Floral polyester bedding sets in blue, pink and yellow

1970s canopy beds from 1973 (2)

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Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

Canopy bed history: The romantic mystique of the 4-poster bed (1974)

Article by Marion Gough – House Beautiful, September 1974

Does anyone doubt that Sleeping Beauty slumbered the ages away in a four-poster bed canopied in gossamer gauze as ephemeral as the dreams she dreamt?

Whatever else would a princess sleep in — or a king or a queen or a courtesan or any heroine who ever lived happily ever after? You certainly don't believe that the Prince took Cinderella home to a Murphy bed, do you?

No, no — it had to be a four-poster, massively columned and gilded, dazzling as her crystal slipper, and totally draped in cloth of gold.

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

THAT'S HOW IT IS WITH THE FOUR-POSTER BED. It invites flights of fancy. It's a bed to be dreamed about as much as to dream in.

Else how to explain its persistent charm, the universal allure that has kept it right up there at the top of the if-I-had-my-druthers list of furniture for a full four centuries past its original reason for being?

And that, in the draughty Gothic days of yore, was to provide a framework for the heavy curtains that protected the occupants from nightly chills, meantime giving mamma and papa some measure of privacy within the family's common bedroom.

Beautiful vintage canopy beds from the 1970s (7)

IT SHOULD NOT DESTROY THE ILLUSION TO LEARN, if you don't already know, that the farther-back genesis of the four-poster was a ticking stuffed with straw or leaves or feathers, laid on a chest against the wall, which later became a cupboard for sleeping.

The wall eventually became a headboard, the bed facing into the room with posts added to its foot, with a roof or tester overhead to support the draft-breaking curtains.

ALSO SEE: 12 examples of classic bedroom decor from the early 1900s

In the days of medieval princes — for the four-poster was not the prerogative of the hot polloi — this idea evolved into four demountable posts with side and end rails that the potentates could carry with them in their interminable journeys.

Hence the French word for furniture is meubles, the Italian one is mobili and the German is Mobel, each reflecting the mobility of noble household goods.

The posted bed was indeed the bed of kings. Egyptian pharaohs held court while reclining, the Indian Moguls dispensed law and order lounging on their divans, the "Bed of Justice," and always under a sheltering canopy that signified that the sheltered one was a nabob.

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

THEREBY HANGS THE TALE OF THE TESTER, the equivalent of a roof over the bed, which was first the ceiling of a room itself, then became a separate frame, expanding with the grandiloquence of its owners until by the Renaissance, it was tantamount to a cornice in a building.

Bedposts exploded in avoirdupois concurrently, draperies became as rich as the silks of the Orient, and the not-inconsiderable skills of European weavers could produce. The bed was virtually a great room within a great room.

MORE 1970s: Vintage Corning Corelle dishes from the '70s & '80s are plates full of memories: See dozens of vintage patterns

In 1580, the Great Bed of Ware was capable of accommodating six couples simultaneously — but let us not dwell upon the sensational.

Old-fashioned canopy beds from the 70s

Time marched on, and we find Louis XIV, who was not only the Sun King, but the acknowledged headman of the Boudoir Period in world history, conducting affairs of the realm at morning levees, enthroned in his bed of state, surrounded by his ebullient gold posts and armorial weavings as well as by his ministers and favorites. One assumes his nightshirts were up to these occasions.

CHARLES II, THAT MOST BED-MINDED ENGLISH MONARCH, was doing the same thing, and it is recorded that his mistress, Louise de Keroualle, received her morning visitors from a bed hung with the most wondrous French "tapissry," a little gift from Charles. As for Nell Gwynn, she took her ease in a bed that was entirely sheathed in embossed and engraved silver.

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

RESEARCH UNCOVERS NO EVIDENCE OF BONA FIDE SOLID SILVER OR SOLID GOLD FOUR-POSTERS. But, conspicuous consumers being what they are in all ages, they surely must have existed outside of fairy tales. And metal beds there certainly have been.

In the late 18th century and in Napoleonic times, when officers went off to war with all the comforts of home, the iron "tent" bed went with them, and Hepplewhite's "tent" or arc-shape tester may have stemmed from that.

As late as 1851, a knock-down officer's bed of iron came in a neat, fold-up package, saving of space — if not sparing the brawn of the poor orderly who was delegated to carry it.

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

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IN THE 1830S, THOSE WITH A LOVE OF THE AUREATE and its luxurious connotation could sleep in beds that looked like gold, thanks to a patent that permitted the coating of cast iron with brass.

There were wondrously ponderous four-posters of brassed-over cast iron in florid Renaissance moldings ready to be dressed in princely damasks or velvets. And by the turn of the past century, many a "best bed" was spindled in glittering brass.

Old-fashioned canopy beds from the 70s

Charles Eastlake, the stern mid-Victorian advocate of Gothic simplicity, hailed the iron bed as an aesthetically sound and sanitary piece of "farm" furniture, designed one with a tester and pointed out that it was quite suitable, too, for well-placed families in the big cities.

Over the centuries, the four posts have taken many forms, fattening up, slimming down and fattening up again, much as a woman perennially on a diet. Posts ranged from the bulbous "cup and cover" melon shapes of Elizabethan oak to the "barley sugar," Flemish-inspired twistings of William and Mary, to the Solomonic columns and polychrome of Saracenic Spain, to the squared-off pilasters of Chippendale's Chinese pagoda beds to the pencil-slender and reeded delicacies of Sheraton and Hepplewhite, to the ponderous cluster-columns Victorians loved and had space for in their 14-foot-high rooms.

Beautiful vintage canopy beds from the 1970s (1)

The weighty four-posters were much favored in the antebellum American South, and recollections of that romantic era surely must play a part in our present-day delight in the tester bed.

Do you not remember Scarlett clinging to a bedpost while her stays were being pulled around her waist?

Earlier in the history of the four-poster, beds were evaluated more for the grandeur of their curtainings — be they damask or tapestry, crewelwork or homely wool — than for the wood frames themselves.

Vintage pink canopy beds from 1978 catalog (6)

So when Will Shakespeare bequeathed his second-best bed to his wife — which would seem ungallant of the Bard — it probably didn't mean that he was relegating her to an uncomfortable mattress, but that the hangings were not as voguish as the ones on Bed Number One. They may well have been warmer.

And speaking of mattresses, whether you were prince or proletarian in a four-poster bed, whether your curtains were velvet embroidered in pearls or common linsey-woolsey, you slept on a stuffed ticking suspended from a criss-cross of ropes strung between the bed rails.

Mattresses on springs didn't make the scene until the early 19th century. There wasn't much bounce to the ounce in the good old days.

ALSO SEE: Did married couples really sleep in separate beds back in the '50s?

Chippendale is credited for having revived the four-poster at a time when it was losing its prevalence. But the fact is that it has never gone "out of style."

Vintage canopy beds from the 1970s

If its practical raison d'etre has long since disappeared with the coming of central heating and individual bedrooms, its appealing aura of the cherishable definitely lingers on.

Clearly, it must touch some real human needs, like the need to dream, to indulge our private hallucinations of grandeur, to feel embraced, protected, sheltered from the impingements of the outside world.

When Jan de Hartog made the four-poster the symbol of a marriage's history, he may have come close to cracking the secret of its perennial come-on. Do we love it because it harks back to the past, gives us a sense of roots and continuity? We'll leave that to the philosophers.

One thing we do know — if any one piece of furniture could be considered the family heirloom of the whole human race, it's the dreamy four-poster.