hi andy,
thanks for the reply. I tried another render with everything you suggested (except linear color mapping & resetting the gamma), and I even moved the TV stand 1mm further from the wall (which mathematically should resolve the same normals problem), but it looks almost the same and it took two minutes longer to render ๐ Also, I need to add, that in my previous post I ended with 32 subdivisions on the dome light; I'll probably edit that in.
http://i.imgur.com/0dDMiaq.png