Thanks to everyone who responded with their pictures and comments. Mavsfan, those ceilings are looking fantastic! I think the different designs you've used throughout your new home give it such character and charm. I really appreciate the pictures. Wonbyherwits, the molding in your room is beautiful. Our builder uses what they refer to as double crown molding because of the "wow" factor and also because he feels with the higher ceilings, a single piece of crown gets lost in the shuffle. After seeing how you added the extra four inches to your molding and the effect you get from it, his opinion is one I would echo and do the same in our home. Worthy, after hearing of your experience, I think we'll go ahead with the crown and have it installed now than adding it later and ending up incurring additional costs (we all know how easily that happens and how quickly those $$$ add up). Speaking of $$$, do you have any idea what it might cost or should cost approximately to add a coffered ceiling to a 14' x 19' dining room. It is rectangular in shape so there are not unusual cuts if that would be a factor. Thanks for any help you can give us. Luckymom, the trim work in the pic you posted is droolworthy and has given me a few more ideas--thanks!

We have a similar situation with our kitchen/great room. Kitchen portion is a combination of 4100K fluorescent, slowly being replaced by 5000K LED. The great room portion has a bunch of incandescent BR40s in sloped ceiling cans, and some 3000K MR16 accent lights on the walls. When I replace the BR40s with LED versions, I am definitely going to use 3000K. (E.g., with something like the TCP LED12BR40D30K.)

We don't have very high ceilings (I think 8') in our dining room and I still think our moulding looks nice. We did stay away from the wider moulding - I think ours is 3 or 4 inches wide - because of the smaller scale. I don't think you have to have crown moulding when the wall color isn't the same as the ceiling, though. It would still be fine to do two different colors if you didn't have moulding. What kind of window treatments will you have? Depending on your treatments, it might look fine to have moulding on the section of the fourth wall that doesn't have windows. Or you could put some kind of cornice over the top part of the window.

"Well, it's not really crown, but more like a flat board to fill the gap, and a strip of cove molding along the top to make up for the uneven ceilings." This statement heads me in a different direction. There's a joint between the two cabinets now. If you are basically putting in flat fill pieces (as you would do in a modern kitchen) I would put in two pieces of wood, with the joint lined up with the cabinets, and paint each the color of the cabinet below. Since this is usually done in a modern kitchen that's the example I found and you can see below they extended the color of the cabinet below up to the ceiling. I realize you don't have a modern kitchen -- but you are proposing a modern style fill strip for the gap so here ya go: