You may have missed it, but I did mention in my last post that I had followed MistyLaraPrincess' suggestion and put the couch in a new scene by itself and turned out the lights. The scene went completely black as expected. It is not a couch material that is glowing, or at least it doesn't glow on its own.

Winterclaw, you may have missed this also, but I said in my last post that I DID try a render with the lights off to see what I can see. I also said that I am having issues figuring out lighting for this space as the light does not travel anywhere near as far as it would in real life (and yes, there is no attenuation on the infinite 'sun') so showing a normal IDL render is not helping. I restate; if I can't tell what's going on, how can I develop a reproducable process for lighting? I'm not looking for a one size fits all method, but a knowable and predictable process for problem solving.

The only other things in view that 'glow' are the TV screen and the inner curtain. Both were checked. The TV screen had an alt specular value that I turned off but it made no difference.

I did also mention that every Greenpots scene I've opened behaves the same way. I just did that again with the Greenpots Livingroom scene and noticed that items aren't 'glowing' they are just not black. They are all the same shade and disappear into each other (but highlight in outline when the material room's eyedropper passes over them). If any of you have any Greenpots products like the school set or the house set you may be able to replicate it. For all I know this is just a quirk of my graphics card and has no impact at all... if it doesn't happen for any of you then that becomes more likely and I can stop fussing about it.