The new bed is just about ready, but I need to make some metal brackets to hold the headboard on. The design is something roughly like the attached photo. I'll use three steel struts like in that photo and my wife would like them to be as thin as is reasonable (to give the appearance of the headboard floating). Suggestions on type of steep and minimum width and thickness? I'm thinking 1 1/2"x3/8" or so?

Also note that the headboard is slightly tilted backwards. I would love to bend the brackets, but don't have access to good equipment to do that. That leaves me with welding as the likely solution, but I'm worried about the strength of it when pressure is put on the headboard. That said, I'd prefer to just have the clean bar and not add any additional dart or structure which changes the shape, but maybe it will be necessary to add some sort of brace for strength?

Open to ideas. also suggestions of best steel for this.