How to make a interior rendering look bright?

[eybl_eybl]

Dear Community,

I'm pretty sure this question was asked serveral times already, but I'm really struggling with interior renderings. Some parts of the renderings are always not well lightend. If I raise the sun or doomlight, than i have this yellow/bright exposed spots.
How can I make a general soft brightend up light for the entire room? I would like to avoid to work with rectangle lights just to brighten up dark areas, it doesn't looks smooth.

Here you can see my struggle:

the "best" i could make



if i lower the exposure, the sun and windowlight is fine, but the rest is too dark:



if i increase the exposure to make the room look bright, than the sun and domlight is burning too much







hope you guys can help.
thanks alot!!

[Micha]

The burn value of the color mapping options is a nice tool to catch high contrasts. You can find a burn parameter also at the frame buffer exposure controls.

(The burn option of the general options is be used for calculating the sampling, the exposure control of the frame buffer is a kind of post work only.)

[piotrus3333]

lighting should look like on your last image. overexposed. put Filmic tone mapping layer on top. done.

[pavol_pastork]

Hi eybl_eybl ,
I work with interior renderings all days and struggled with that too.

Now I have a few steps to good looking interior rendering (maybe someone more experienced will help me to make it even more realistic):
- All settings are standard and I only change quality slider.
- I use Sun (set as Improved) inside Domelight.
- In every window use glass panel with some thickness (8 or 10mm) - material Vray Glass Window Neutral (withou it my interior get more direct light).
- In frame buffer I use these Layers (from bottom)
>LightMix (always use for better light control after render)
>Exposure - for start I set highlight burn about 0,3-0,35
>Filmic Tonemap - set Power Curve (for most interiors I use default values, maybe sometime more Contrast)
>Curve or White Balance - are Optional...

My interior renderings look like this: