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[HUGE_WALRUS]

You want your central areas/objects to be nice.  This means always have booze and try to have meals, for example.  Your central staircase (if you use one) should have its landings smoothed, engraved, and maybe in possession of a statue or two (I know some people like to add stuff like waterfalls, as well).

A good dining room seems to be one of the most effective and easiest.  A big room with a lot of furniture that's smoothed and engraved will do wonders for dorfy moods.  If you can dig it in layers that are already more valuable (like flux or amongst gem/metal veins), so much the better.  It might be smart to gussy up your stockrooms, too - or at least the ones every dorf is guaranteed to visit: the food stockpiles.

One disadvantage of things like statue gardens and dining rooms (especially designated meeting zone ones) is that it encourages dorfs to socialize.  When Urist from level 34 dies, Urist from level 2 doesn't care.  When Urist's best friend Urist who he exchanged jokes with dies, it bums him out.  Especially if a bunch of his fellow slackers are similarly affected (by death).

[Kay12]

- Booze aplenty
- Epic communal dining hall
- If you can afford that, good bedrooms for everyone
- Don't let more than a few dwarves die at a time
- Art defacement is a sin

[Urist Imiknorris]

- Booze aplenty
- Epic communal dining hall
- If you can afford that, good bedrooms for everyone
- Don't let more than a few dwarves die at a time
- Art defacement is a sin

-Waterfalls everywhere
-Good cooks make good meals make happies

[Khym Chanur]

Giving your dwarves individual bedrooms helps, since they get a happy thought from sleeping in their own bedroom, and more happy thoughts from admiring the furniture they own.

The communal dining hall doesn't necessarily be huge, depending on your circumstances.  I've found that digging a 7x7 unsmoothed dining hall in a flux layer, with a dozen chairs and a dozen thrones made from flux by a proficient mason, is often enough to get a legendary dining room, and you can make up the difference by smoothing and engraving.

Dwarves get a happy thought from drinking the kind of booze they prefer, so have a bunch of small/medium farm plots of as many different kinds of brewable plants as your can grow, including surface crops.  You can gather from surface shrubs or buy plants from human/elven caravans and brew the results to get the seeds to start the process.

If you have a main meeting area, make it a zoo and stick in the cage as many different kinds of non-grazing animals as possible.  Use cage traps to catch non-domestic wild animals, tame them, and stick them in the cage.  You can also use animal traps to catch vermin and put the types that nobody hates (chipmunks, blue jays, etc) into the cage as well (vermin don't need to be tamed to be handled safely).  Also, I believe that only tamed grazers need to eat grass, so if a cage trap catches a grazer you should be able to simply install the cage with the un-tamed animal in the zoo and it will still generate happy thoughts.

Your central staircase (if you use one) should have its landings smoothed, engraved, and maybe in possession of a statue or two (I know some people like to add stuff like waterfalls, as well).

I'm pretty sure that smoothing and engravings aren't admired directly, but only act to increase the value of rooms (and the fortress).  You can use them to increase the value of bedrooms, so they'll get happier thoughts from sleeping in them.

[Kattel]

my current fortress has 3 or 5 wide hallways with gold/platinum statues lining the middle. even when i lose someone (stupid giant badgers) they dont drop below light green. (therapist)