I’ve come to the point where I have no idea what to change when I freshly look at it, and I still don’t like it. Any tips in any direction (subjective too) is greatly appreciated
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My first thought is that it is very dark, and I can’t see much detail of many surfaces (e.g. the bar wood, etc.).
I would play around with texture scales, because something feels off with things like the brick size, and then other textures seem too low a scale (e.g. a lot of the wood textures seem off, and what is the material of the walls? It looks like a grimey plaster from a PS game). I have no idea how anyone would use those cabinets near the ceiling. The windows also look low poly (as in the frames). The bulbs look like solid glass spheres more than actual bulbs (try using ‘architectural glass’ instead of physically real glass).
I suspect better lighting would make it easier to then critique other aspects.
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Thank you so much. I’ll update the pic once I make your changes
I don’t know if it’s intentional, but if not, the room’s architecture strikes me as somewhat surreal or Escher-esque. The scale seems a bit off here and there.
For example, I would consider the empty shelves near the ceiling practically unreachable, even with the ladder that’s there. Is there a cabinet next to the ladder? But where does it lead, since it appears to be an exterior wall? Or is that the entrance door? If so, it seems rather small.
The glass in the large lamp sculpture above the table seems very, very thick, or even solid. Normally, they’re quite thin.
And the slanted window at the top also seems unreachable, yet it’s slightly open?
Long story short: I think adjusting the room’s height and the scale of the individual elements would make the whole thing more realistic. 
The glass blocks look great, but compared to the door next to the ladder, the individual blocks appear very large.
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I like it. But something seems a bit off. The door to the outside seems not high enough (eyeballed: nearly as high as the chimey + half as high as the window). The lower part of the building outside does not look like first floor.
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Besides scale issues (check your camera’s focal length to make sure you aren’t making it appear worse than it may be), there are two things that jump out to me:
❶ Damage
Nothing in your scene shows wear. This is often the defining characteristic between cartoon and real. Real objects get used, scratched, burnished just by being handled repeatedly. Corners get bumped. Floors get worn.
To improve realism in a truly satisfying way, work on making your surfaces imperfect.
❷ Bump and/or Displacement
The bricks are nice, but I notice that the left wall has a flat sheen (revealed by the lighting). Even the cheapest, flatest faux brick surfaces have significant texture to them. A real brick surface will be imperfect.
For this angle a bump map should probably fix it. You can create one that’ll work directly from the brick texture itself.
Continuing, there is no such thing as a flat or straight surface in a home. You can get away with it on a few things (mantle, table top, counter top), but almost nothing else should be perfectly straight.
Model in some bends, crookedness, etc. Move the Chesterfield so that it isn’t perfectly straight against the wall — just pulling one side forward by a real-world inch will do.
Final note on scale
The thing that is probably messing with you (and everyone) the most is the juxtaposition between the high ceilings (which is fine) and the items on the fireplace mantle along with the bookcase.
Assuming the fireplace is not larger than it ought to be, the items atop it are, or at least appear to be, because they have no obviously correct dimension. That vase, for example, is much larger than it looks like it ought to be, and I don’t know many instances where really big pottery is placed on a mantle.
What really sells the distortion, though, is the bookcase. Imagine picking up one of those books and hefting it over to the counter across the way. The tomes are huge.
If you are looking for fish-eye, you need to make sure to warp the image better so that the size of the books works. Otherwise your bookcase is just too big.
Alas, you must always be mindful of real-world sizes when putting a scene together. Even assets generated by other people marked as “actual size” are often not, and should be scaled appropriately when placing in-scene.
Anyway, I think the lighting is fine, and I like the colors.
(I really like the red rug, though it should have a wear pattern from the kitchen toward the table, harsher near the counter and softer and wider toward the sofa and door.)
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Cute render! I like it! I think in terms of realism what stood out to me was that the counter top on the right and the marble on the left both are very rough, but typically those materials will be shiny because of a clear coat on top. You probably want to reduce roughness on them or add clear coat layer. Same for the wood on the floor although floor wood can definitely be dull, but in a modern home usually isn’t.
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To avoid to measure the size all object manually, i sometimes add a simple character in correct proportions (1.80m) to a scene and move it around. This often helps me to identify scale or plausibility problems (could the character reach object xy, could he use the door, table etc.)
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@polycrisis A useful tactic, yes (and I endorse that behavior), but to be clear, the dimensions of an object are easily obtained right from the N-panel.
Here’s the default cube’s dimensions:
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Like others have noticed, dimensions seem to be off. There is really no excuse to not make everything real scale so that feeling goes away. There are a few other things like missing bevels - edges of objects seem to be sharp while in reality most edges are not sharp and bevels catch highlights so they are usually very visible. Or maybe that’s just because the materials seem to be really diffuse. I am not a huge fan of the curtain material - it’s not clear what it is, maybe it could be more realistic. I find it quite unusual that the wooden floor boards would go straight into the fireplace. It’s a flammable material and there is usually something non-flammable just outside the fireplace - I don’t know, some slab of stone, tiles or something, certainly not wood. It’s also not fully rendered, could use some more samples. Some other materials are also catching my eyes, like the countertop that is unrealistically completely diffuse. There are some materials that may look deliberately like that, but that seems to be out of place in this context. The unreachable shelves do look weird to me as well. I would also add some realistic widow frames, not really sure what is going on with them now…
Was AI used to add some elements or is it just strong denoising artifacts? This sort of color noise seems unusual to me:
Maybe I am just not used to so much denoising…
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Some uv issue and need to edit roof window. Curtain material is not real need to fix it. Carpet has to be high about 2 sm
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Good luck and have a nice day
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Thanks! I actually did that before sending this picture and look what it led me to, lol. So I now know that I have no intuition for proportions whatsoever (fixing them rn)
Thank you, I’ll change the materials. No AI was used, I set a low enough samples to see the result faster, so that’s probably why everything looks so noisy. I’ll increase it for the final image
Pelase update the picture after the changes 
Another thing I noticed: There’s no glass in the window? At least there are no reflections.
If you left out the glass to let in sunlight:
You can achieve the same effect with glass in place if you enable path guiding (CPU rendering).
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Good point!
Hey! Here’s the fixed version. Been working on it slowly almost every day. I did everything you’ve been suggesting to me (huge thank you, again). Hopefully all the measures are normal this time (I know the window is too tall but I like it. I’m also not sure about the fireplace, haven’t found a real life reference but the proportions seem fine to me. The mirror on it is exactly shoulders-face high). Architectural glass was even worse for light bulbs so I replaced them. Made the room a bit smaller. The door at the end leads to a open balcony. Tried to add messiness, like the apartment existed for taking guests but priorities have shifted in recent times. Also check out the rug that is now fluffy
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I’m not a fan of “messiness” adding “realism,” personally. Sometimes, you want “a photograph” to be “ideal.”
That being said: What I would now do is turn on the lighting fixtures that you now have: over the room, and over the breakfast bar. Insert as many additional lights as you may need to clearly illuminate everything in the scene. (Yes, including those books to the left of the fireplace.) Also, consider adding some color to those outdoor lights. Sunlight is never actually neutral.