Are you using low voltage or incandescent lighting? If you use low voltage, you can rotate the light bulb in the socket and also vary the width and intensity, color, etc. of the light beaming from the ceiling to acheive the desired lighting requirement. What do you plan to utilize the ceiling lights for? a walkway, reading, general lighting, etc? Remember to take the angle of the lights you have beaming toward the fireplace and make sure the beam clears the mantle. too many times, people put the lights up there and forget the extension of the mantle and it blocks the fireplace they wanted to light up. Just a thought. Low voltage or adjustable ceiling lights will/can correct this if it's already installed. This is a picture of my living room with a vaulted ceiling only to approximately 13-14 feet. We placed a "square" pattern of 4 lights around the seating area to illuminate that, then a "curved" pattern of 4 lights illuminating a preceived walkway thru the room, then we placed two lights to beam into the fireplace, and 4 more lights to illuminate the entrance of each patio door extending off of this room. Our lights are low voltage and you can see the size of them in the far back area of this room. This is the pre-finished ceiling, hopefully, altho blurry, you can pick out the way we put the lights. Think about furniture placement and where your guests will sit, you don't want a beam of light blinding them, you want the room to feel illuminated, yet soft and inviting. Too much information, sorry, but I remember dreaming many nights about my lighting plan and I know it's importance to light a room the way you will actually live and utilize that room. If you have more questions, I can try and take a picture of the ceiling itself to show you the layout of our lights. V

wow this does look really good. I would continue to work at this. I think the idea of lightening up the inside of the bookcase with the fabric wrapped foam would also help bridge everything. also maybe decorating the mantle with lighter objects to pull the lighter color over to that wall. maybe replacing the the stone around the fireplace to something lighter as well. overall it looks really beautiful; I'm just nit picking.

Let's start with the essential pieces and then see what furniture can come back in. Move the game table to the wall where you have the dog bowls to get it out of the way of the door. Try flipping the sectional so the longer leg faces the TV and the short leg creates a path between it and the game table in its new position. Put the arm chair by the wall in front of the dog crate, angled to face the TV. You can put the white end table between it and the sofa for now, but it really is too tall, You should replace it with something just shorter than the sofa and chair arms. If there's room, put the slipper chair next to the white chair, between it and the door. Any piece of furniture that doesn't serve a purpose needs to exit from this room.

During the planning stage we went back and forth several times with the direction of the vault. The porch outside the big glass doors is a gable and we played with the idea of having the vault run from left to right and through to the porch. We kept changing the proportions of the room to accommodate dining, seating areas etc. At the end we 'forgot' to change the dimensions back to 22 x 26. You look at the plans so much that you don't 'see them'. The room looks massive yet it is not long enough for seating and dining - and its too wide. I didn't notice it until the foundation was already poured. Originally we had planned that the room to the left of the main entrance would serve as a dining room. I was advised to put the dining table in the main room and so we made the original dining space smaller by adding space to the office. I'm old school and always liked a dining room and breakfast space in the kitchen. Now I'm building a very expensive house without either. Lesson: decide on the things that are important to you and stick to them. Ignore the advice of people who might live a different lifestyle than you.