What Are the Best Tips for Making a DIY Canopy?

When installing a DIY canopy, the method of installation usually depends on the canopy’s style. Designs can range from canopies that cover an entire bed to decorative swaths of fabric that frame only the headboard. Canopies may also include soft lighting, which changes the installation method slightly.

One of the most popular DIY canopy styles is the princess canopy because it works well for people who want to enhance their bedrooms but don’t have a lot of time or handyman skills. The canopy typically starts with some kind of frame, like a small metal hoop or a flanged piece of piping. Those using a hoop should stitch a channel into the top of each piece of fabric being used in the canopy. The hoop can then be slipped into the channels, allowing the fabric to hang in a graceful, suspended drape along either side of the bed.

Hoop canopies usually hang from the ceiling, suspended by metallic chains attached to screw hooks. Screw hooks have a screw-end and a hook end. The installer usually needs to drill small pilot holes into the ceiling before screwing the hooks into the holes by hand. The pilot holes should generally form a square shape, allowing the hoop to hang evenly. Lengths of chain dangle from the hooks and S-hooks connect the hoop to the ends of the chains.

The second kind of princess canopy frame is really just a support rod. All the installer needs is a 6-inch (about 12 cm) length of .5 to 1 inch (1 to 2 cm) diameter pipe and a corresponding flared flange. The pipe and flange may be glued together with bonding cement and the flange can be screwed into the wall above the bed. The pipe should stick out from the wall at a 90° angle, allowing the installer to tent a length of fabric over the bed. The installer may glue a wooden finial to the end of the pipe and paint the assembly to make it decorative as well as supportive.

Another simple DIY canopy is the rectangular canopy, which is little more than a rectangle of decorative fabric suspended over the bed. This DIY canopy may be installed one of two ways. The first way involves adding screw hooks to the ceiling right above each corner of the bed. The installer can then simply tie each corner of the fabric to a corresponding hook.

The second way to install this DIY canopy requires supports that start on the floor and rise a few feet above each corner of the bed. These supports may be in the form of flanged piping that is screwed into the floor, or sturdy wooden posts secured to the floor with L-brackets. The fabric can then be suspended by its corners from the posts via snugly-tied cords.

Almost any style of DIY canopy can be spruced up with a little lighting. The installer may drape white twinkle lights over the inside or outside of the canopy to create soft, diffused light. Similarly, rectangular canopies suspended from wooden posts may be lit with lanterns hung from lantern brackets screwed into the top of each post.