How to add light without losing model color?

Question

Whenever I add a light, it either isn't strong enough to illuminate anything or is so strong that the models lose any color and turn white in rendering. I would like to add consistent light without removing the color I added to my models

Answer 1

You somehow reduced exposure by a lot and changed your color space.

Go to Render tab > Color Managment > Exposure and set it to 0 (default value). You probably don't want to change that setting unless you really know what you are doing.

Exposure

You'll find an example of different exposure in the official documentation (first image). Basically it represents the sensitivity of the camera. Can be useful to tweak the overall look of your renders.

Look

The only parameter from the Color Managment I would advise to tweak is the Look, which is contrast. There are some presets to choose from.

View Transform (color space)

The default color space is AgX, which emulates photorealistic lights and colors. It's perfect for anything that you want to feel realistic. One of the caracteristic of it, is that as in real life, any colored surface will turn to white when overexposed. It's what we experienced as well, as humans.

The alternative is Standard. This color space will never turn your colors to white even when overexposed, which can feel artificial and sometimes wanted. Works well for toon/cel-shading looks.