Your walls, ceiling and carpeting are all light colored already. So, the reason your appears dark must be because of lighting. Would suggest you consider installing recessed ceiling fixtures in the ceiling. Would suggest you place them perhaps about 2'-0" off the walls and place them at a regular spacing. These should create pools of light on the floor and the furniture which should help create ambient lighting for the room. Good luck and love your furnishing by the way!

Why is all this stuff in the bedroom? Bedrooms should be places of calm and uncluttered space. I do not even see your bed. From what I can see most of this does not belong in a bedroom so I need more info

If this house is pre-WWII you shouldn't paint the woodwork. I don't think you can go any whiter with the wall color without clashing with the warm wood furnishings. I agree with the previous two posters - you need to improve the lighting and remove some of the furnishings. You can't get a relaxed feeling in an over-stuffed room. You have only posted a picture of one end of the room, but if there is a window, reevaluate the covering.

I'm not terribly fond of bedrooms that just revolve around the bed itself so its a bit of a bedroom/reading space with the other end of the room currently being consumed by my no rather shabby and very black sleigh bed and black timber blinds.

I'm very open to changing the bed, but the blinds have to stay i'm afraid

Thanks for that but you want brighter but refuse to change the obvious things that are making the sapce dark Those blinds for instance why do they need to stay? I think having a reading space in a bedroom is a great idea but honestly what purpose does the console have to start.

About 25% of the room is dark things. They are fascinating objects. The rest of the room is already light and bright. The room could look brighter if you moved the smaller items on the floor to the bookcases. Open the blinds every morning and leave them up until dark.

Another option is to move one of the three very large pieces out of the room, if you have space elsewhere.

Museums rotate the things on display every few months. If you have additional storage space, you could put away half the items, then rotate what you display every few months, for example, spring, summer, fall and winter could feature different objects.

You've got a lot of cool stuff but too much. Can any be relocated to other spaces? What's the story with the blinds? Do you need room darkening to sleep? Can they be pulled all the way up and just used when needed? If you removed a lot of items I think maybe some beautiful flowered or damask traditional drapes could soften the space. Can you afford new bedding?