I can't illuminate my interior properly

Hello. I have just started creating a room (don’t mind how bad it looks at the moment), but I can’t get the illumination right.
As you can see in the first image, despite there being three potent lights, the ceiling is pretty dark and so is the door. It seems that the lights only really illuminate right below them, and the rest of the room remains darker than it should be.



This is how that same door works with a light horizontally next to it:


Why does it not look like that in the first picture? How can I have that entire room illuminated with ceiling lights?
If I create many lights or increase their intensity, the floor becomes incredibly bright, but not so much the ceiling/walls.

What render engine are you using?

Cycles, sorry for not specifying

if you are using cycles, then you need to up the bounces, enable reflective caustics, disable clipping, and as a last resort, set the lights to linear falloff (plug strength into light falloff node linear socket).

How big is the room ? Why not upload the file for people to look at?

walls are relatively dark colored and reflect little light !
which would be like real life walls!

what kind of light do you have on ceiling ?

happy cl