Not to put my film in the same league as Pixar films (OK, I'll do it anyway, and shamelessly!) but I read the Art Directors of Toy Story went for a "hyper" realistic palette: everything is physically correct, and the lights are accurate, but then things are sort of cranked up a bit to enhance dramatic effect.

Source photo and test rendering of the tail of a Hawker Sidley tri-level passenger coach. 

More than for any other project, my modeling and rendering has been based on extensive research, photographing and studying the look, sound and feel of various environments. For example, flourescent lights flick on then almost totally off thousands of times a second. All lights have a cycle, but flouro's are really flickery and almost go dark if you shoot them with a high-speed camera. I've built in that flicker (but on a much more pleasant level) in my interior lighting on the trains.

Interior of the passenger car. Note the rendering on the right isn't quite detailed yet: it was a lighting test.

Also, the weird yellow lights you see in Train Stations or on street lights are really, really yellow. I was amazed with how much I needed to overcompensate.