Most product renders fail before a single material is assigned. They fail at the lighting stage — because there was never a plan, just a dome light and hope.
For every brand project I now build a lighting bible first: three to five HDR studio setups that define how this brand's products are always lit. Hard rim from the left? Giant top softbox with a 20% fill? Once that's decided, every artist and every future render speaks the same visual language.
My default starting recipe in Redshift: one oversized area light at 45° top-left (the "hero"), a strip light opposite for the edge, and a very dim, very large bounce card below the product. Everything else is subtraction, not addition.
The unexpected benefit: client reviews get faster. When lighting is systematic, feedback stops being "something feels off" and becomes "use setup B".