Wall switches/simple dimmers deal with one function only, the starting/stopping of nominal 120v ac electricity going to the fixture which contains the load. Only the load should have a neutral (white) line leaving it plus the switchable line from the switch entering it. So your old switch should have two wires connecting to it, one bringing in 120v power (black?) to the switch and the other (hopefully not white) when switch is "ON" sending power to the fixture. The dimmer you purchase will contain installation instructions to thoroughly cover all this without doubt. Here is a link that might be useful: Install dimmer

I agonized over our tray ceiling in the dining room and finally decided to do the walls and the ceiling and the recessed tray ceiling the same color. I realized that what really bothered me most was the white trim moulding in the tray area (we have 4 big square blocks in the dining room ceiling). I had the trim moulding painted dark brown (only because it matched our dark antique pine table and the dark brown light fixture). I'm all for introducing color into the trim moulding up there in the ceiling. It worked for us, the white just didn't seem right. We're very happy with it, now.

I'm assuming you must have a lot of space in the attic already if you are considering vaulted? I *love* a vaulted ceiling and have 3 in our current home build. 2 serve a purpose, other 1 is for looks. Being in Texas, interesting ceilings are common. Does it cost more? YES. I'm also that one that will always be for old rustic looking beams, structural or not. We are using beams in our vaulted living room that were taken from old barns. In our master bedroom, we are doing a tray ceiling with the same old beams but will run them horizontally or in tic-tac-toe. Will some here scream "fake". Sure. Do I care? Nope. Not even a tiny bit. In Texas, it would help sell a home even (not that I care about selling, not planning on moving again until health says otherwise). That's the thing with the online world. You have people from all over the world who are raised around certain environments and will all have their own set of opinions. You have to decide what YOU want. When it comes down to it, online opinions do not matter because they will not be the ones living in your home. You can always learn from their thoughts (they are right that it will cost more to build & possibly heat/cool, depending on your climate), but you have to make the decision in the end. You're the one that will be living with it. What do you love? &, what can you afford?

As for the original photo I posted of the dining room, i have my work cut out for me with the walls. It appears the previous owners did a sub-par job skim coating the walls and ceiling in that one room. All of the rounded edges still have some texture on them and there are dents everywhere. To add they covered it with paintable wallpaper, and painted a really warm dingy looking ivory over the wall to match the ceiling. Then it appears they used the dragging technique over the wallpaper with beige. Overall it is terrible and I hate it. So I’m going to need to remove and repair. Just saying I’m not sticking with this, any of this beige paint. I’m hoping to do a crisper ivory on this whole level, like alabaster from SW. I might consider doing a darker wall vs the ceiling. I’m torn. I’m wanting to do rustic glam because I live in Colorado, because of the barn wood floors and bc we have earth tones through out. I love your ideas so far guys and want to say thank you! Oh one more thing, as for centering the dining table, that’s my other problem. They didn’t tray the ceiling far enough so the chandelier is centered in the tray, not in the room bc of the bay winder. The dining table is prob as far left as I can get because of traffic flow and that’s one of two places I can put any dining storage. There’s a huge intake duct on the wall behind where you see the chandelier that goes left almost to the door. So I was just thinking of getting an oversized orb or unusual shaped chandelier and putting a cabinet to the right to hopefully offset the visual that something is off.