Electroluminescent paint makes your bike light up the night

 16, 2013 (11:01 am) By: James Plafke

If you’re familiar with electroluminescent paint, then you probably have a much higher quality of life than those who are unaware of the amazing glowing substance. Those rad flames you painted on the side of your El Camino and that wizard standing atop a mountain on your windowless van are tough to see in low-light conditions, like when you’re following a band around the country. With Lumilorelectroluminescent paint, though, your detailed collage of Calvin peeing on various automotive brand symbols can now be a shining beacon of artistic freedom as you drive down a dimly lit highway.

The coating is spray-able, and can comfortably conform around compound curves to form solid, uniform layers of paint. By applying an electric current, the coating emits light, looking almost as if the images are computer-generated.

The coating isn’t the paint used to create the image itself, but rather a layer that mixes with the normally painted image, which then causes the art to light up. The light doesn’t require a dimly-lit environment to shine, as it works just fine under street lights, but it will appear more crisp when displayed within darkness.

At the moment, the company that created LumiLor, Darkside Scientific, has four available colors of the coating. Green and blue, which are reportedly the brightest, and white and orange. The white is said to be better for showing off colors like red and yellow, but can be mixed with just about any color to offer some amount of glow. The orange would also mesh well with similar colors, like reds and yellows. The light will even show through a chrome paint, but admittedly not nearly as stunningly as the brighter colors displayed above.

The biggest challenge with LumiLor isn’t mixing the colors, but figuring out exactly where to wire up the paint job in order to provide it with a current. You wouldn’t want wires sticking out of your finely detailed hog, so you have to plan accordingly.

Darkside claims that the product isn’t just limited to vehicles, which makes sense, considering all the paint needs to glow is something to stick to and an electric current. Perhaps LumiLor could be the next step in customizing fancy PC battle stations, and you could show off your sweet Gabe Newell portraiture that adorns your gaming rig’s case at your next LAN party.

Check out Darkside’s site for more information, and for more videos the electroluminescent paint in action.