Interior Night Scene not realistic

[karayong]

I don't know what I'm doing wrong here, used IES lights for the downlights and pendant lamps and track lighting, but small spheres about 3cm radius for the dining chandelier.

Also used a night HDRI with dome light

Can I have some suggestions on how to improve this scene?

[Bruce Hart]

Hey Kara

I would suggest looking at reference photos for the look. Do an image search on Google for "Night-time interiors". If you do this you will probably see photos showing ambient dark blue light washing the scene, combined with warm tones for the artificial lighting. Unless there is a window behind the camera, the HDRI is probably contributing nothing to the scene lighting (there's no windows on three sides). Instead of the HDRI, see what you can get by just using a dark blue toned area light behind the view. Check you are not using vignetting on the camera, and set the white balance to neutral perhaps.

 

Nailing the subtleties of night-time lighting can be a bit tricky, so turn on your lights one at a time to see the contribution (or use the light select render element perhaps). And as I said - use reference.