Make A Canopy Bed With Fairy Lights, step by step

Update: Holy cow, you folks are full of so many lively ideas today! I am having trouble keeping up with comments since they are rolling in so furiously, but please know I am reading them all and loving all the suggestions!

Glad Friday! We have been all over the place this week, painting the walls/trim/ceiling in the bathroom & closet, diving into some basket craftiness, de-wallpapering our biggest room yet (the 21′ long kitchen), and now we have a little Clara-room update along with some photoshop percolating as we plot our next move in there. But first, here is the compact (and twinkly) addition:

Things simply got a little brighter in here…

Ever since we hung her canopy, we have thought about adding lights to it. Both for the magic of it (Clara loves them) and also for the function of it being a well-lit place for bedtime stories. We feared traditional Christmas lights would be too heavy and make the fabric sag in weird ways (plus, they could look a little messy when they were off) so after some hunting online, we came across what are frequently dubbed “Fairy Lights.”

They are in short small LEDs (check out this picture for scale – they are compact) that are strung on a thin wire. The particular set that we picked up was 33 feet long and sold for $14 on Amazon. They are not longer available but here is an affiliate link for something similar.

The wire itself is extremely light and fairly moldable, so it was straightforward to weave it back and forth across the 18″ corbels that the fabric rests on. And by some luck of the draw, 33 feet was simply about the ideal length to go back and forth four times on each side of the peak to the side brackets and secure them at each turn with white tape, so they are not something Clara easily unwind and swing around like a lasso – but they will easily release under her weight, so she could not strangle on them.

The next step was simply draping the canopy back over them. The LEDs are so small that they tuck into the folds and are barely visible when they are off. And when they are on, well, you can see how they twinkle below. And since they are LEDs, they are fully cool to the touch – so we do not have any fear of them being against fabric. I also enjoy that they are small resin-ish glowing dots instead of larger glass bulbs that could shatter.

I wish the part that plugs in were not big and black, but we were able to plug it in behind the bed and wrap the cord around the bed in a way that it is able to be hidden behind the canopy most of the time, but easily accessed when it is time to connect the cords to the power adapter. See how you can see it on the left, but it is tucked away and invisible on the right? Thank you John, hand model of the ages.

Clara LOVES them. Partly because they are called “Fairy Lights” but mostly because she feels quite special having her own set of secret lights above the bed. We intended simply to put them on for story time at night or other special play times, but they in fact put off a fair amount of light, so we have found ourselves putting them on simply about any time we are in the room and the sun is not fully out.

We have had them up there for a week or two (did not want to sing their praises too soon only to have them burn out or something weird) and so far they have been excellent for our gentle girl. She has not touched them once, but loves gazing up at them. Meanwhile, my best friend’s four year old daughter is nothing short of an acrobat, so we laughed about how she’d likely scale the canopy and hang from the fabric like she was Pink in concert.

But even with the addition of the lights, the canopy is still certainly missing something above it. There is still so much white on white on white that we have been brainstorming which way we want to go. We have debated painting simply that peaked area under the canopy for a while and then adding something else in there (like a hanging paper lantern or mobile or even a cute little animal head or something). So here are a few ideas, thanks to our good friend Photoshop.

Idea #1: A gray tone on the walls to add drama and a little dreaminess to the canopy, inspired by this wallpaper by Osborne And Little.

Idea #2: Perhaps I could freehand some sort of imperfect painterly-ish mural, inspired by this excellent fabric covered lamp shade?

Idea #3: Another hand painted mural possibility could be something like this cluster of colorful raindrops in a variety of colors (inspired by this remarkable but sadly sold out print).

Idea #4: Then I saw this picture of a fairly blue-green wall with little birds on it and thought that could be lively.

Idea #5: Since Clara’s quite the animal lover, we thought perhaps a friendly giraffe or zebra (like this one from Dwell Studio) peering down at her while she sleeps could be lively with a blue-gray wall.

Idea #6: These little teardrops in a few distinct colors had my mind spinning with possibilities too.

Idea #7: Then I thought about a colorful fabric hung along that back wall, perhaps something with the same large-scale boldness of this pink and red wall coverings that Jenny shared here.

 Idea #8: And then there was the possibility of even darker charcoal paint on the walls and some asymmetrical handmade banners in a few colors like these (which were in fact a especially cool photo background for this party). Update: since this one looks chalkboard-ish there have been a lot of suggestions to do that so Clara can doodle away, but we worry that chalk dust over her bed might not be the best call (there are chalk markers but they are not as charming, so we will have to see where we end up).

What do you folks think? Any go-tos? Or combos? I think we are leaning towards the gray background tone in Idea #1 or the dark charcoal color in Idea #8, but we are not sure if we will stencil stars or something else – and we might simply combine it with something 3D (like a little felt circle bunting or a hanging paper lantern or something). We’d enjoy for Clara to weigh in on things too, and then I am hoping to work on it this weekend (along with stenciling the bathroom floor and helping John finish that sunroom tile). What are you folks up to this weekend?

Update: Clara weighed in on these photoshopped pics as well as some more that we made based on people’s suggestions and then we made one last photoshopped picture for her, since she hoped to combine a few ideas (we even video-taped her reaction, which was fairly funny). Cannot wait to get it done and share what she liked best!