It sounds like you are striving for excellence in your renderings which is what we love to see.
Mostly you are now dealing with the challenge of having a model to match the quality you desire.
The steps for excellent rendering are : model, camera placement, lighting, textures/materials, rendering, post-pro
A professional workflow for lighting is to use only a minimum amount of materials such as window glass, or any materials needed for the light fixtures, but to paint everything else matte grey and concentrate on setting up the lighting. (in rendering parlance this is sometimes referred to as a "clay" render) This would be done without furniture to speed up the test rendering process.
Next, as you add materials and furniture into the space, then you may find some slight adjustments to the lighting are necessary, but separating the lighting and materials development are important in a complex lighting environment such as this interior space with a combination of natural and artificial light.
I suggest still finding a better couch (and chairs and artwork, etc.), as the wrinkled surface of the poor quality model of this couch does not seem natural. (now it's more obvious with larger rendering) Texture mapping on the furniture is also important if striving for photo realism.
Subject: Tropical lighting settings
Subject: Interior Renderings - Exposure for Background Outside
Subject: Night Shot - Exposure and Lighting
Subject: Advanced tutorialsFletch wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2015 7:44 pm Please see also the Render Challenge No1 for Twilight V2 thread which provides a scene for your use.
This image in that thread shows all the settings for the sky, and for interior camera exposure.
Fletch wrote: ↑Tue Nov 06, 2018 11:25 am Too much/powerful lighting will result in errors and actually slow down the rendering and/or result in artifacts in the image such as noise and "fireflies" (little annoying white pixels that will not clear up) that are undesirable. The colors and materials/reflections will be wrong as well. Lighting is super important.
We suggest setting all lights to correct physical radius, and setting power according to actual Lumen output for that light fixture - find this info on the manufacturer's website.