Everyone has their own subjective perspectives on what looks good/bad, but I’ve never found any furniture style table attractive at any level, they all look tacky to me. More importantly, the typically narrower rails & reduced real estate around the pockets to make comfortable hand bridges - are detrimental/awkward to both novice & seasoned players. Noob players may just not be aware of it…
I put my 9’ GC6 in a fairly tight room and it worked out just fine. Luckily my room has a large opening into the foyer on one end wall which helps. The installer gave me a few tips that I hadn’t thought of or found in my research during pre planning. Namely that statistically most tighter rail shots come up around the foot of the table, so its best if possible to orient things such that your hot spots that will require the shorty cue - are toward the head of the table. Also, rail shots come up more often in corners vs squarely in the middle of the end rails, so if you have plenty of width vs length (like you do, 16x17, when ideally for a 9’ you want a 15x19+), then if you purposely offset the table laterally a bit vs centering it in the room sideways - even just by 2-3”, you will eliminate all tight corner shots from one side of the table, whereas perfectly centering it - will generally leave you with a bit more instances of tighter rail shots on all edges of the table. You will also find that a 9’ GC occupies a few inches less total physical outer footprint than a 9’ Diamond - this doesn’t affect playable room space since that is determined by the table bed dimensions (100x50”) - however in a tight ish room where you will have chairs, pool racks, shelves etc - the general feel of the space will benefit from every inch you can find.
I’m a geeky engineer type & did a rather detailed table space analysis on my setup prior to purchase to convince myself I could make the 9’ GC work for my available space. Happy to share the doc with you - if interested, send me PM with your email.
BTW, not trying to push you into any particular direction on table brand - just sharing some of the stuff I ran into along the way in case it helps.
Cheers