Palm Springs in winter is like New York in the fall: the only place to be. The weather is flawless, with luxuriously bright days absent of cloud or care. Abundant rains earlier in the season carpet the rocky foothills with green and crown the towering San Jacinto Mountains behind them with snow, creating a dazzling backdrop for this slightly wacky desert hamlet where the circa 1962 beat goes on.

Happily so, because the secret of Palm Springs’ appeal has always been its lack of complication. Leave the urban sprawl to Los Angeles and intellectual exertions to destinations up the coast (or the other one): this is the kingdom of orange daquiris sipped by the kidney-shaped pool, where lush golf courses rise up from the badlands, and where Sonny Bono is still a hero. Somehow, this little time warp works.

Order an iced coffee at the trendy, friendly Koffi (515 N. Palm Canyon Drive, 760-416-2244), where le tout Palm Springs comes for caffeinated pleasure, then don your strongest sunglasses and inspect the funky furniture and antiques shops along upper Palm Canyon Drive. You won’t be far from the swanky Movie Colony Hotel (726 N. Indian Ave., 888-953-5700, www.moviecolonyhotel.com; room rates $189-$289), designed in 1935 by Albert Frey and today a microcosm of Palm Springs Modern. Each of the 17 rooms and townhouse suites features custom-designed furniture alongside vintage pieces, coupled with suede headboards and original Julius Schulman architectural photographs. When the clock strikes 5:30 p.m., guests are welcome to partake of a “Dean Martini” or other libation around the al fresco bar.

Like many a desert denizen, Le Parker Meridien Palm Springs (4200 E. Palm Canyon Drive, 760-770-5000, www.lemeridien.com; room rates $205-$440), on the south side of town, has had its share of facelifts. The property first saw light of day in 1959 as a Holiday Inn and welcomed guests as Merv Griffin’s Resort before its current makeover by a New York designer named Jonathan Adler. Travelers passing through the orange lacquered doors of the lobby expecting a breezy homage to Mid-Century Modern may get a jolt from Mr. Adler’s jumble of colored glass vases here, an orange macrame oddity there, and jejune appointments hiding beneath Uzbekistani throws.

This peculiar aesthetic eases up in the gue strooms and ebbs at the entrance to Norma’s, the hotel’s modish coffee shop that boasts the same exuberant menu as its West 57th Street inspiration. Free fruit smoothie “shots,” the Wise Dr. Schmatkin’s Mandarin Orange French Toast ($12), Mango-Papaya Brown Butter Cinnamon Crepes ($14): was grazing food ever as glam as this? If the Parker bears too heavy an attitude for this desert latitude, Norma’s brings tasty solace.

To be on the cutting edge of California desert hip, be sure to venture outside Palm Springs city limits to neighboring Desert Hot Springs. The dusty desert community is wide open to the winds – it is in fact surrounded by wind farms – and has an extraordinarily pure water supply. Rainfall and snowmelt from nearby Mt. San Gorgonio and the upper desert seep deep underground into San Andreas splinter faults, which resort owners draw from shallow wells on their properties (delicious drinking water comes from an even deeper aquifer). Result: Pool water here has a marvelously silky look and feel, and one of the best places to experience it is at the MiracleManorRetreat (12589 Reposo Way, 877-329-6641, www.miraclemanor.com; room rates $150-$180), a modern but laidback six-room inn with a naturally hot mineral water spa and swimming pool, from which there are sweeping views of the desert. There are two treatment rooms for expert massages and other spa treatments ($125-$195).

For the ultimate D.H.S. experience you’d have to look to Steven Lowe, who turned an unassuming two-story 1957 motel into the Beat Hotel (67840 Hacienda Ave., 760-288-2280, www.dhsbeathotel.com; room rates $150). Its eight rooms wrap around the pool and are each furnished with midcentury pieces, vintage manual typewriters, and Beat-era artwork and photographs. The overriding look is clean and white: the place energizes on a low vibe.

Mr. Lowe, onetime assistant to William S. Burroughs, also owns and runs the four-room Lautner Motel (San Antonio St. at Yerxa Rd, 760-288-2280, www.lautnermotel.com; room rates $150). The very epitome of Mid-Century Modern, the structure was built in 1947 by John Lautner on a commission from Hollywood writer-producer Lucien Hubbard (of “Wings” fame). It’s a marvel: from the outside, the angled concrete walls of the interlocking units look like a bunker set down in the sand, a shelter from the desert wind, but inside the rooms all is openness and light. Glass walls on one side reveal private gardens and deserts capes beyond, while clerestories above the beds allow for stargazing. It’s Lautner’s vision of the “contemporary cave,” adroitly updated. One room is done up exclusively with the streamlined acrylic furniture of Los Angeles designer Charles Hollis Jones: in a word, fabulous.