Resolveing the lighting

This is a render shot of the old lighting. with the roof off. very good looking. but not realistic as the roof is taken off. so i wasn't satisfied with that and decided that lighting need to be re-done.This is a split shot of the render .
left = roof off
right = roof on
this effect is really dull and blurry, a lot of grain in the render image aswell. not good.another shot of the kitchen with all the wall and roof on, really dark and grainny.so what i did is clear the outliner and unessasery matertials, texturing and bits and bobs that has been deleted. but still remains there in the file. this is a render shot of me using a volume light to light the scene so it highlights some of the edges of the objects. i had the setting for the light to shine inwards and had the volume light enlarge so it covers the whole kitchen scene.here i added some directional light from point diagnally upwards. i try using this as a soft light. which worked fine.here is a render adjusting the intensity and playing with the settings of the lights.here i used an area light to act as light coming from the window so it has some sort of light on the windows. adding this it has made it more brighter and very tom and jerry colour theme. i like it. =D
as you can see on the previous image it shows the window background is black. so what i did is add an image plane to act as and realistic background.
first, i was thinking of a green front garden. didn't go quiet well with the scene.so i tried a city sunset image. which i like. like i always wanted a sunset kind of theme and colour.
heres the final lighting outcome. i like it. bright enough to show our modeling skills. and it plays along the theme of tom and jerry as i wanted it from my research.