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I was mostly just messing around with various things I wanted to learn and ended up putting them all in one scene...

Wood floor material with spec map and roughness mapped to the inverse.
Displacement mapping on the wall
Cloth simulation ( turned out blah )
Mesh lights with an attempted semi-translucent lamp shade, could use hints here...
Glass bottle with wine and ice cubes

I'm not sure where but somehow it feels both too dark AND blown out on the couch. I need to learn/work on post and light balancing now. Any tips?

Restarted all the lighting and the preview node, and added a bump to the blanket

Wow... Looking now i ended up with almost identical result.

I threw away the hdri and am using a white color for the environment, reset all the imager nodes, switched to linear camera response, and almost the same...

I thought somehow this one looked a lot better though before seeing them side by side... lol

hey...
i would say-good start
cheers!

NICE!

Nice! did you use Direct lighting or PT

Both above are pathtracing.

I prefer the lighting and softer focus of the first image. It is more natural and photographic.
The wall lamps look better too, with their warm light contrasting with the cooler environment lighting.

If you think the couch is too bright, darken the material. Another option is trying a different film response, But I do not recommend using a linear response curve, as it will just end up looking clinical and lifeless like your second image. Film response curves are a fantastic tool for enhancing photorealistic images, and since it does not add any time to the render there is no reason not to use one.

Apart from that I like your scene, you have done a good job on texturing, i especially like the floor.
Not sure about the bump on the blanket though. Maybe it will look better if you reduce the bump amplitude and add some colour variation. If you can use a normal map instead it may give a better result as well.