Your friend, the upholstered headboard

I am a big proponent of upholstered headboards.  They are inexpensive enough to be the perfect first bed for a singleton's apartment or a new couple's first house, and if after ten years you tire of it, you can replace it with your dream four poster, or canopy bed, or whatever you wish.  Or pick a new upholstered headboard from the endless variety available and keep on updating ad infinitum.  But you may just love your first headboard so much you never change.  My mother's upholstered headboard endures after forty years.

Upholstered headboards also take up a lot less room than most bed frames.  My husband and I switched out an old cannon-ball bed for an upholstered headboard, and we gained a good nine or ten inches of space at the end of our bed.

Here's a classic from West Elm, available in Queen in this Jute for a mere $449.

Or it can be special ordered for the same price (as far as I can tell) in more than a dozen other fabrics, including this velvet in Lagoon.

Or this paisley:

I'm partial to the Stevenson Nailhead headboard from Ballard Designs (it's what I have) and I love it in their Parish fabric:

Even Target has upholstered headboards.  The Brittany in Aubergine velvet is pretty good looking, and even better looking when you know the price, $284.99 (on sale at the moment).