thanks for the comments GecT so I applied the texture of monitor screens to incandescent channel, definitely brightened them up a lot, but now they also seem too bright and as there is a texture applied I see no options to reduce the brightness as they now seem "washed out" for the lights with the decay, I am presuming? you mean angled away from the screens to simulate the light thrown off to desk and nearby objects? I had originally tried lights pointing to the monitors to brighten up but that didn't work... A ton of learning in this - modeling tools, texturing,uv'ing, and mental ray rendering more than once I felt I was on overload will definitely come back to this in future when I have more experience/knowledge to add bits-n-bobs into scene, and try to get a better render the lighting tutorials really confused me and I think I spent as much time tweaking lights/render as I did in all of the modeling and uv'ing , but I definitely won't give up