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We report the use of optimal control algorithms for tailoring the effective Hamiltonians in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy through sophisticated radio-frequency (rf) pulse irradiation. Specifically, we address dipolar recoupling in solid-state NMR of powder samples for which case pulse sequences offering evolution under planar double-quantum and isotropic mixing dipolar coupling Hamiltonians are designed. The pulse sequences are constructed numerically to cope with a range of experimental conditions such as inhomogeneous rf fields, spread of chemical shifts, the intrinsic orientation dependencies of powder samples, and sample spinning. While the vast majority of previous dipolar recoupling sequences are operating through planar double-or zero-quantum effective Hamiltonians, we present here not only improved variants of such experiments but also for the first time homonuclear isotropic mixing sequences which transfers all Ix, Iy, and Iz polarizations from one spin to the same operators on another spin simultaneously and with equal efficiency. This property may be exploited to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of two-dimensional experiments by a factor of √2 compared to conventional solid-state methods otherwise showing the same efficiency. The sequences are tested numerically and experimentally for a powder of 13Cα, 13Cβ-L-alanine and demonstrate substantial sensitivity gains over previous dipolar recoupling experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]