Having recently painted the exterior of my house, when is someone going to develop a paint on application that is infinitely programmable to alter its colour? I mean, halfway through and she says "I'm not quite sure about the colour now it's on the wall...." This way you can reprogram the house colour any time you want. Must be able to work for interior too.-- Alcin, Aug 12 2000 Paint-on LCD technology http://www.nature.c...20429/020429-7.htmlNot quite baked yet, but it's in the oven. [half, May 03 2002, last modified Oct 21 2004] Philips: Paintable Displays http://www.research.../display/paintdisp/Same technology as in the for-pay Nature article, in a more accessible presentation. [jutta, Dec 14 2004] On (Dutch) Sesame Street, Tommy once invented a paint that would give a purple background with nice coloured flowers, just by brushing it to the wall. Let's ask him how he did that; would want programmable designs as well as just colors.-- templar, Aug 14 2000 I don't know if that was serious (no sarcasm detector), but you do that with chromakey (the blue-screen tech that let Superman fly in the movies) and appropriately colored paint.-- bookworm, Aug 14 2000 i am never sarcastic ;-) the chromakey is ok but that only works if I see the wall through a camera/computer, right? If I just look at the wall, it would turn out plain blue. Maybe the electronic ink solution is something we can use as a wallpaper. That way we can have animated wallpaper as well! Show moving clouds on my walls and a nice night sky on the ceiling of my bedroom... mmm...-- templar, Aug 15 2000 I like the idea of electronic wallpaper! A very thin LCD screen? Your very own IMAX theater.-- sandyainsw, Nov 28 2000 just upscale whatever it was that the secretary in Total Recall was using...-- absterge, Nov 29 2000 Using the LCD screen idea, you could solve the problem of ugly buildings in the city by having every building display on each wall a picture taken by a camera on the other side of the building, thereby rendering all the buildings virtually invisible. This would also work when you wanted a house in the country that didn't disrupt the natural appearance of its surroundings!-- mwburden, Dec 16 2000 It's definitely do-able on the interior. I hate decorating so I've just painted my hallway white and installed tracked spotlights. Bored of the colour? Just change the bulbs. Scale it up for the exterior. There's plenty of public buildings that use coloured floodlights for exterior illumination. Alternately, houses could be constructed from a double layer of aquarium glass, with coloured liquid filling the cavity. Turn your house into a lava lamp!-- DrBob, Dec 18 2000, last modified Dec 19 2000 Now that Lava Lamp idea is pretty cool, think I'll do that!-- barnzenen, Dec 18 2000 I wonder how programmable exterior paint would be affected by a DeGaussing gun?-- nick_n_uit, Dec 19 2000 Why not have both! Fish in a lava lamp.-- barnzenen, Dec 19 2000 Why not have both! Fish in a lava lamp like extrior for the house. Think how the neighbors would react with their blah vinal siding.-- barnzenen, Dec 19 2000 so many ideas for this one:
have the outer walls display a picture of a different house, it would make decorating for holidays/parties trivial, just program the walls to display christmas lights. there is the problem of getting enough light for the effects to be visible in sunlight, assuming you're using an LCD-based system. or you could hook up a small server to a barometer/thermometer: instant mood-house! though it would suck a whole lot if the server crashed. imagine a whole house displaying a BSOD.-- rhino, Dec 19 2000 Pigments which can be made to change color are probably already on the market. If you could suspend these pigments in house paint, you could change the wall color every few months or so depending on your mood. Going further, you could devise a machine which can be linked to a PC to apply the neccessary stimulus to pigments in the desired patterns of color on the wall, for example clouds, scenery etc. while crawling along the wall - call it a "wall printer"?-- hypertokyo, Jan 11 2001 Someone gave a new employee one of the standard impossible tasks, bring back a can of striped paint. New employee said okay, and went away. Hah, hah, hah, right?
New employee returns a couple of hours later--with a can of striped paint.
Take one empty paint can, and some plastic sheets. Cut the plastic to divide the can into vertical stripes. Pour oil and acrylic paints, in different colors, into alternate stripes. Remove the plastic.
Voila, usable striped paint! Usable for what is another question: there are relatively few situations where both kinds of paint are appropriate, and you will be throwing away the paintbrush when you're done.
Wallpaper is probably simpler.-- Redbird, Mar 20 2001 Hey hypertokyo, I like your idea about linking to a computer, but can imagine my house going this nasty shade of blue every so often...-- Alcin, Jun 14 2001 A paint that chnges clour depending on temperature exists at http://www.t-m-c.com, but how to aplly it to a building ist the problem, because it does not resist sunlight and it does not last very long jauslin@dgj.ch DGJ Architetcts http://www.dgj.ch-- dgj, Jul 25 2001 Added link.-- half, May 03 2002 LCD based paint would be hell on the electric bill... and also pretty fragile. We already have a paint based on phosphorus, but that idea of hooking it up to a computer is good. I recently had to paint my house because the paint faded... I wish I could just paste a jpeg image onto my computer to change the color of my house.-- Mikloth, Jun 03 2005 Intead, use the emerging nano-chromic technology which only requires power to render a difference.-- bristolz, Jun 03 2005 random, halfbakery