Does this scheme apply to Houdini? If yes, why do I see my final renders darker than those of the render view? Cheers.

it does apply, however it depends on the setup, usually just by making sure that Edit/ColorSettings/ColorCorrection/Gamma is set to 2.2 or have your LUT

but if you are seeing output in render view brighter than in the file, then that suggests that in renderview you have correctly applied viewing LUT, usually gamma 2.2, but in the application you are using to look at rendered image from disk you don't