editing pics

I try to edit in the same ambient light if I can. Also some monitor calibrators provide an ambient light detection and compensation which is good, but still it's far from the consistency one is looking to get.

I also noticed that my eyes adapt to what they see and it tends to look better after a while but when I look at the same photos the next day, they don't look that good.

While I use monitor calibration and avoid bright light during editing, my conclusion is to edit by numbers as much as possible on top of that. I carefully watch the histogram channels, and make sure that skin tones fall into a proper exposure zone. The zone system can be mapped onto a histogram and one can fairly accurately adjust exposure and contrast this way (search the web on this). In addition, carefully white-balanced photos have better histograms and it's easier to adjust exposure and contrast for them.