powersaver painting?

Question

Is there a way you can use powerful luminesent paint mixed with flouesent paint and use a small sized light to iluminate your home while saving power, and providing sufficient light?

is flouresent light bad for your eyes?

Answer 1

This is kind of a neat idea, but unfortunately will not work unless the paint as some kind of built in energy source. While that is possible it would not be very safe. Perhaps you have heard of the old fashioned glow-in-the-dark watch dials from back in the 1920's. Those used a special kind of paint made with the radioactive element radium mixed with phosphorous. The radiation from the radium makes the phosphorous glow or fluoresce. The energy comes from the radioactive decay of the radium. That sort of paint would give off light without any other energy source required and would do so for hundreds of years. It is worth noting a couple of things. You would not have much choice about the color of the light and also the light is not very bright. Radium decays into Radon gas, which is a radio active gas that causes lung cancer in low concentrations and radiation poisoning in high concentrations, hence the danger of this approach. Only radioactive materials can give off enough energy for a long enough time to make a useful glowing paint.

Regular fluorescent paint has just the phosphorus in it and relies on light hitting it to energize it. Basically it absorbs light, converts the light to another color and then re emits the new color of light. It can store up a little bit of energy but this energy conversion is not 100% efficient so it re emits less light than it absorbed. A normal surface reflects part of the light. A white surface reflects most light that hits it. So a white painted surface will actually reflect more light than a fluorescent surface can re emit. Basically what this means is that painting your room white is the most efficient safe thing your can do.

Fluorescent light is just ordinary light and so it is not bad for your eyes.

Answer 2

Doing it like that will actualy waste energy because the flourescent paint just absorbs light and converts it inot light of a different color, then reemits it, but it can never work with 100% efficiency.

What would work, however, is to paint the inside of your house with really reflective paint, so the light bounces around and illuminates it.

Answer 3

i dont know about doing this in your whole house as like the others said its not effecient but one of my friends painted her sons room with that glow in the dark paint so that he would not have to have a night light on all night and that worked well for that situation.

Answer 4

Cover your walls with Mylar film to make them more reflective. It has a side benefit of keeping the aliens from reading your thoughts.

Answer 5

Nope

Answer 6

Flourescent light can be very hard on the eyes and have been linked to migraines and photosensitve seizures. they also are very harsh

Answer 7

i never heard of that working. but light colors will make a room look brighter.