It's not just about the food; it's about your mood.

As Sacramento's restaurant scene becomes more competitive, new eateries are upping the design ante: using color, furnishings and materials to make diners feel sophisticated, festive or at home from the moment they walk in.

The emphasis on design has sharpened over the past three years, as about 30 new restaurants opened within a two-mile radius of downtown, said restaurant owner Mason Wong, whose family operates The Park restaurant and nightclub complex at 15th and L street, considered a design pioneer when it opened in 2005.

"There's more competition now, and I think that's probably a big reason why," Wong said.

One of the priciest examples of this trend is Ella Dining Room & Bar at 12th and K streets. Ella was opened late last year by the Selland family, which also owns The Kitchen restaurant and Selland's Market Cafe in East Sacramento.

Design manager Tamara Baker was in charge of a $4.5 million budget for decorating Ella – 10 times the amount of money she spent decorating Selland's Market Cafe when it opened in 2002.

For Selland's Market, Baker shopped at Home Depot, antique stores and flea markets. For Ella, her family worked with UXUS, a design firm from Amsterdam. They scoured Europe for furnishings and fixtures.

Ella's ceiling and walls are covered with 500 pairs of reclaimed wooden shutters from Hungary. Everywhere, different shades of white provide subtle contrast. The oyster bar was fashioned from a 3,000-pound piece of Carrara marble. Porcelain lamps painted with gold leaf cast warm light over the tables.

Linen runners, white china and Christofle flatware contrast with rustic wooden tabletops. Elaborate flower arrangements feature more variations on white: snow on the mountain, lilies, snapdragons, hydrangeas and roses. Golden forks, knives and spoons were silk-screened by hand onto the pale lavender wallpaper that lines the private dining room.

Since its opening, Ella has been featured in design magazines around the world. The restaurant recently won the "Best Hospitality Debut" award from Hospitality Design Magazine.

"Everything is about a study in contrasts," Baker said of Ella. "It's the refined against the rustic. The restaurant is designed to make people feel comfortable, maybe without exactly knowing why."

If Ella is supposed to make people feel at home, Ali Mackani's new Lounge on 20 in midtown tries to make them feel as if they're visiting a friend's trendy loft in Manhattan or San Francisco. Mackani also owns Restaurant 55 Degrees on the Capitol Mall.

"We wanted the feel to be like you're going to someone's loft for a dinner party," said Leanne Davis, a senior designer at Lionakis Beaumont, the architecture firm that designed Lounge on 20 and Restaurant 55 Degrees.

The sleek leather chairs and couches in Lounge on 20 can be moved around to form different conversational groups. LED lights cast a red glow over a "wave wall" of textured fiberboard. Nearly 400 bottles of wine hang from metal racks mounted on a maple wall painted with an iridescent glaze.

In the bathroom, women and men share a hand-washing area. "It makes people talk more and hang out," Davis said.

Both Ella and Lounge on 20 feature a welcome innovation: hooks under the bar where women can hang their purses.

Architect Ron Vrilakas, who was involved in designing several midtown restaurants, including Zócalo, Dragonfly, and 58 Degrees & Holding Co., said the new design focus has come mostly in downtown and midtown, where "all the restaurants are side by side and competing with each other."

"If you put a restaurant in the Pocket, you don't have a lot of competition, and everyone isn't right there with you," he said.

Wong is about to enter a new combatant into the battle of trendy midtown eateries. Like Lounge on 20, Wong's MIX Downtown nightclub atop the renovated Firestone store at 16th and L streets will feature "small plates" of food.

For MIX, Wong has hired Napa-based Shopworks, the same designer he used for The Park. The wood-decked patio will have "a beachy feel," Wong said, with a fire pit and redwood furniture.

Brightly colored leather furniture will provide "pop" to a design that's "organic – with a lot of wood and some stone and some steel elements," Wong said.

For inspiration, Wong draws on designs he has seen in other cities. His favorites include Katana in Los Angeles – it has lots of steel, wood and concrete – and the Mondrian Hotel, also in Los Angeles, whose outdoor patio features beds for patrons to hang out on. Wong included beds in the courtyard of The Park complex.

"A lot of it is just how you take things that you like and make them a little more unique," Wong said.

Call The Bee's Mary Lynne Vellinga, (916) 321-1094.