The rise in your ceiling is so gentle that I don't think it needs to be featured. If you are choosing a soft neutral color for your walls, I would paint the ceiling the same color, to make the shape of the walls seem more natural. Your room needs better lighting almost everywhere, and I agree that you need a larger, lower chandelier over your table. I'd also recommend the following steps, before you make a big investment in furniture. Move the big picture toward the corner cabinet, so that its center lines up with the center of the table, and hang it lower, so that the top of the frame lines up with the top of your china cabinet. If your corner cabinet is not a valuable antique, paint the inside to match the wall, which will lighten the look of that corner. Take everything off the top of it, too. Try shifting your loveseat another foot away from the wall, and move the console that is now along the long wall to stand behind the loveseat, facing into the dining room. Use that wall like an art gallery, and cover it with pictures you like, and your children's drawings in inexpensive frames. Add a more substantial end table between the loveseat and the wall, with a larger lamp. Try shifting your larger sofa forward into the room, at least a foot away from the railing, add a skinny table behind it, and a nice pair of floor lamps to stand behind the outer ends of the sofa. Find a big, rectangular mirror and hang that vertically over your drop-leaf table in the living room. It will open that wall visually, break up the space, and reflect light from the window into the room, as well as add some sparkle and glow. Consider replacing the two unrelated shelf cabinets in that end of the room with a pair of very tall, slender bookcases painted to match your walls, perhaps with a deep contrasting color inside the boxes. Move everything that's now in and on top of your two cases, as well as all the photos on the table, into those bookcases, to unclutter the surfaces, and pull all those things into some sort of order. Then you'll have room to put a lamp on that table as well. Those changes should pull your nice things together better, and solve the light issue, and then you will know what else you want to do.

Well, you need an attachment point above it. I sprayed the tree with anti-dessicant spray so it wouldn't dry out, drilled a 1/2" hole through the base of the trunk, put a rope through the hole, threw the rope over the support that it would be hanging from, and hoisted it up. Then I put on the lights and ornaments after it was in place. Wish I had a picture to show you, but can't find one right now.

Cubes where the room is not wider or longer in at least one direction than the ceiling is high are not particularly comfortable, similar to how large rooms with low ceilings are not particularly comfortable. In a cube, the room tends to start feeling shaft like, where a large room with a low ceiling often seems to sag or press down in the center. Also, cubes are static and rectangles are not. It might be better if the ceiling was 15-16 if 24 is the largest dimension of the room. Peaks are a little different. I lived in an apartment where the original parlor floors were essentially a golden rectangle. They had been lofted at one end (about 1/3 of the space) and it made the high ceiling in the remaining area kind of elevator shaft-like. The apartments that maintained the original proportions were more comfortable spaces. Of the above pictures Mutiny and Rufty seem fine because of the length of the room and the ability to experience the height from the opposite end of the room in some sort of perspective. I actually find the Shades Creek kitchen proportions unpleasant. It makes a good picture but I don't think I would like working in that kitchen. I am curious as to how many people with 8-9 foot ceilings vacuum or clean them on a regular basis. I am not sure the extra height makes rooms extra dirty? That said I had to clean my 14 foot LR with elaborate plaster cornices with an extention pole with brushes on it...I purposely did not have any lighting in that ceiling. I think the people who bought the apartment from my buyer put in recessed cans. (Not right in a 1830s house and very hard to change. A ten foot ladder is much harder to manage than an 8 foot ladder).

In case anyone is curious, this is the chandelier that we went with, and I love it :) It's definitely bigger than the previous one and we hung it lower. It makes me happy to see it and to have the other one out!