Calibrating a display

When calibrating your computer display with either a colormunki or spyder pro is it acceptable to calibrate with ambient light or in a dark room?  It seems no matter what system I use to calibrate my display the end result is a dark hard copy of the photograph.  My image looks great on the display but sucks big time when its printed.  I just bought a colormunki and it was worse than my spyder 3 pro.  I have a epson R3000 printer and have not seen a good photo printed on this printer. Any advise on hjow to properly calibarte a display is greatly appreciated.