That's pretty much it for the room objects - there is also going to be a person on the bed, but it doesnt make any difference. (What i meant by different geometry is that all objects in the test scene are just proxies made with primitives, the final scene is composed of much more detailed geometry).
It seems that the main problem with using real lighting (not fake photoshop adjustments) is the excessive color variation that cannot be removed by tweaking contrast/brigtness/light color, (in environment dialog) - see picture
http://www.eccentrix.com/members/z80180/room2.jpg
Any ideas on how to get rid of it?
I would have kept the gradient approach, but there is one little thing that cannot be done with it - secondary light sources (like a glow of a digital alarm clock). The gradient map strictly defines all coloring in the rendering, so anything outside blue-black range would be wiped out. Of course there is always rendering in passes, but thats a different story...
I guess i'll just keep looking for solutions on internet...