Could you step back and take some "whole room" photos? Very hard to gauge with the closeups.

are there any old churches in your town? Most old ones have vaulted sanctuaries with lots of chandeliers hanging down. You might get some ideas from that. Or just do an image search.

If you search something like dining room chandelier height online, you'll get height recommendations. I believe our electrician recommended 5' but I'm going to play around with a pinata before I commit to a height.

Personally I think it would be cool to get one of those plastic but old looking medallions, and have a carpenter cut it in half, then bevel the cut edges to fit together exactly where your vault meets. Not all medallions would look right with this treatment, but done right it would look cool and hide where your wire is coming out of the ceiling.

Depending on your decor taste you could add some beams to the ceiling, rustic or otherwise, and hang a chandelier from one. Otherwise, I don't think it would look awful hanging from one of the angled walls, gravity will drop it straight. And of course you could add extra cans for general illumination, just be sure they're on a dimmer. Wall sconces are also nice in a dining room, or matched skinny lamps on a buffet. Crate and Barrel has some nice ones. If you like modern design, how about one of those big arc lamps to swoop over the table to act like a chandelier?

I don't envy you having to CHANGE the light bulbs up there!

There are a number of chandeliers that can be mounted on a sloped ceiling. Some require a sloped ceiling adapter, others come in a sloped ceiling configuration.

Right, your builder should clearly upgrade his lighting ideas to fit his ceiling ideas. In this regard, it would be to his benefit (his learning curve) to bring him back and ask him: here's my chandelier - how do I install it?

If you're doing this yourself... what are the limitations of the amount of work you want to do? Do you want to rewire, or are we working just with attaching different fixtures to the existing wiring? And is building anything in the cards? Whether a beam, or a closed box across the peak, that would expand the choices considerably.

Is your DR table centered under these lights? You likely want the chandelier centered over the table.

One of the options I would play with (and it really depends on the whole room shot) is a linear multi-light fixture, mimicking the idea put forward by lovesummer above of a beam. The bar on the fixture could go along the vault or across it, and the question only becomes where you wire it in and how you do it unobtrusively.

KarinL

Could you put two chandeliers there? I assume your table is under the two recessed lights? Could you change those out to two chandeliers hanging down? I've seen two chandeliers over a table and it can be doubly beautiful! :)

Don't know if this is your style, but it would work with a sloped ceiling:
{{!gwi}}

Thank you all for the ideas. I'm sorry I can't really post better pictures (at least right now). There's only one entrance into the room, and even backed out as far as I can go, I can't fit from floor to ceiling (or even table-height to ceiling) in my camera's frame. I did try several times and from different angles.

I've never seen the two chandelier thing before - I'll have to google for some pics.

I like the idea of wall sconces. I do have some purely decorative candle sconces in the room, and maybe I can change those to real ones.

Thanks for your help!