We love custom wallpaper here at WallpaperInk, and we love finding new and innovative wallpaper ideas. Yesterday in our blog we showed you 5 crazy wallpaper ideas that are actually real. We found out that the lickable wallpaper from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory really exists, and that you can also get heat-sensitive wallpaper that changes and fades depending on the temperature in the room, not to mention the Pixelnote wallpaper for offices that's made entirely of different coloured post-it notes.
We found so many great ideas and got so worked up by some of the designs that we spent all day trying to come up with our own innovative wallpaper...until we were told off for not doing our work.
Well having calmed down after a hot chocolate and a good night's sleep, I started researching what to write for today's blog post. What I found made me squeal with joy.
You know how excited we got about the designs we mentioned yesterday? Well, what if I told you there's more?
More? MORE! How can there be more? How many more things can you do with wallpaper?
I'm glad you asked...
1. Strømmer: Streams and Flows
In Sandnes in Norway, anyone walking through the pedestrian tunnel under the railway at night has to do so with no street lamps or security lights.
Don't worry, though. The walls light up instead.
That's right, the wall panels actually light up as people walk past.
Strømmer, which translates to 'streams and flows' in English, was made as an art installation in Sandnes as part of a European City of Culture bid in 2008, and is made up of a series of wall panels that light up when a shadow is cast on them.
The "light on demand" system has a series of LEDs imbedded into the wall panels that react to movement and shadow, much like security lights. When they detect someone walking past the wall lights up in the same shape that a shadow would cast, then once they're gone the lights turn off. You can cast your shadow onto the wall and watch it light up. Not only is the wall incredibly energy efficient, it's also a great safety feature that keeps the underpass lit when it needs to be. It reacts instantly to pedestrians walking past, keeping the tunnel lit for them, and then turns off when it's not needed. It's also a lot of fun to play with as this video shows!
2. Phosphowall and the Ecco Luce project
I've always thought great way to use your walls to light your way would be some sort of glow in the dark wallpaper.
Glow in the dark wallpaper? That's impossible!
Try telling that to Ich & Kar, the French designers behind Phosphowall. This wallpaper uses a special phosphorescent ink in its designs which looks perfectly normal in the light, but glows in the dark. This allows for some amazingly creative designs, much like the 'cats eyes' design above, and it also means you can walk around at night without having to trip over your shoes, stub your toe on the door frame, and spend ten minutes fumbling for the light switch!
Deisgner Jonas Samson had a similar idea, only using LEDs instead of glow in the dark ink, which developed into the 'Ecco Luce' project. He created light-emitting wallpaper that looks like normal wallpaper during the day. Switch off the light, however, and the light-sensitive LEDs light up. Some of his designs are simply beautiful, and there's even scope for active designs that move as you do. Take a look at the installation at the Twente University in the Netherlands here.
3. Living wallpaper
In our last post I mentioned Shi Yuan's heat-sensitive wallpaper designs that appear and fade depending on the temperature of the room, and I said that it was probably as close to “living” wallpaper as you can get.
Readers, I have never been so wrong.
This living wall in the Anthropologie Store in Regent Street spans three floors and is one of hundreds of living wallpaper designs. It features an array of real plants and grasses and is held by a soil backing. Rainwater collected from the roof is trickled down through the backing, letting the plants thrive. In turn they help keep the ambient temperature of the building cooler and keep the air quality cleaner, not to mention the fact that the wall is alive!
4. Scratch wallpaper
I don't know about you, but I've always loved scratching lottery tickets, and I'm more than confident I'm not alone in saying that. Well what if your wallpaper pattern was made entirely of the same stuff? London-based designer Linda Florence has done just that. Linda created a series of intricate floral wallpaper designs, which were then coated in a thin layer of silver foil. The foil then has to be scratched away with a coin or some other tool in order to reveal the pattern underneath. Created for the London Printworks gallery in 2006, this innovative design will give you hours of fun!
5. Wallpaper TV
Okay, so this isn't strictly wallpaper as such, but it is most definitely worth mentioning. UK electronics manufacturer NDS have been working on a new project called Surfaces, which is looking into the next generation of television displays: transparent screens.
Transparent HDTVs are currently available, but the technology is still in its infancy at the moment and they are incredibly expensive. However this development could revolutionise the way we watch television. Tiled panels will allow for a wall-to-wall display, which can either be used as a cinema-style screen, or as more of a 'desktop' allowing you to browse sites and watch video simultaneously. Then when you're done, you can turn off the screens to be left with a clear pane of glass, so the wallpaper behind will show through.
Very exciting...but it all sounds a bit Minority Report to me!
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