Phosphorescent paints, pigments and pebbles that charge via sunlight by day and glow after dark transform the nighttime urban landscape, illuminating murals, bike paths, skate parks, rivers and even live snails. It’s like taking the glow-in-the-dark stickers you plastered all over everything as a kid out into the real world and achieving similar effects on a satisfyingly large scale, hiding secrets all over the city that will be revealed when the sun goes down.

3 Glow-in-the-Dark Street Art Murals by Reskate

When the sun goes down, hand puppets, knives and space helmets appear within a rabbit, a planet and a loaf of bread. Spanish creative studio Reskate used glow-in-the-dark paint to hide these unexpected figures within their silhouetted murals.

Glow in the Dark Bike Path in the Netherlands

This bike path is safer after dark thanks to small particles of phosphor called ‘luminosphores’ that charge up during the day and release light at night. Urban planners in Lidzbark Warminski, Poland took inspiration from a similar project by Studio Roosegaarde in the Netherlands, but wanted to use a zero-energy light source instead of solar-powered LEDs.

Phosphorescent Mural by SpY, Paris

Blending into the pale brick on the side of a Paris building by day, this mural by SpY reveals its secrets at night, blaring ‘I AM NOT A REAL ARTIST.’

Snail Swarm Enhanced with LED Lights & UV Paint

Researching snails can be kind of dry, so a group of researchers from the Ecology department at the University of Exeter found a more fun – and visually dazzling – way to go about it. The team tagged hundreds of live snails with LED lights and UV paint, and then tracked their patterns of movement at night. The experiment is an effort to track how snails spread lungworm to dogs.

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Glow In The Dark Outdoor Art 15 Designs That Come Alive At Night

Charged during the day and lighting up at night, this beautiful bicycle trail outside the town of Lidzbark Warmiski is designed to improve safety for riders out after dark.

Luminescent phosphor can hold emit light of various colors, but blue was selected to match the surrounding landscape and conjure associations with the sky (the source of the path’s power). Once deployed, the passive system recharges itself, obviating the need for connectivity or continual maintenance.

Though the technologies behind the effects differ, the path in Poland was inspired in part by the Starry Night bike path created in the Netherlands by Studio Roosegaarde. Both are proofs of concept, tests meant in part to demonstrate the potential and durability of this trail-blazing lighting strategy.

Other illumination options were considered, but this glow-in-the-dark approach was deemed both appealing and cost-effective by the Board of Regional Roads. Adjacent pedestrian paths are also bracketed by glowing blue lines and denoted for persons on foot with likewise-illuminated path signage underfoot.

A pair of crafty carpenters have separately arrived at the same conclusion: glow-in-the-dark resin is a really neat way to fill cracks, gaps, splits and other natural or accidental voids frequently found in wood shelves and surfaces.

Whether you have a small piece that needs infill or mending or a larger project in the works, one of these approaches may well be ideal for your own do-it-yourself project – basic details are provided below but full instructions on each strategy can be found via links included as well. In each case, the principle ingredients are the same: custom-mixed photoluminescent resin, leveling, cutting, sanding, time and patience.

In the first instance, Mat Brown decided to try something other than the standard invisible-style repair to solve the problem of empty space around knots, cracks and pits creating front-facing unevenness in boards to be used as shelving.

He provides further details on the process over at his blog, but in a nutshell: he used robust aluminum plumbers tape below and on the sides, leveled the surface, then heated up the resin, mixed in the powder and poured in the results. “Now it’s time to mix the resin. Give it a good mixing and then add your pigment. If you warm it up a bit, on a heater or with a hairdryer or something, the bubbles will pop out of it much more easily. Bubbles can ruin resin casts, so carefully mix and warm the resin, then let it sit for a while before pouring.” After a second similar round he cut, sanded and finished the pieces and mounted them on standard wall brackets.

Mike Warren has subsequently brought a similar idea to the table, creating a tutorial for filling in the naturally separation gaps found in a certain species of cyprus, livening up the biscuit-joined surface with bright resin.

The full illustrated list of 25 steps for this latter version can be seen on Instructables, but in this case a similar process was used, just heavier-duty tools employed (like a drum sander) to keep the workload down because of the more frequent and sizable voids found in ‘pecky cyprus’: “These damaged pockets can be easily removed and create cavities in the wood which are perfect for filling with resin and glow powder. The pockets of damaged (rotten) cypress are soft and can [be cleared] with compressed air and some light digging with a hand tool.” Hat tip to Chris of Colossal for finding both of these projects as well.

Imagine the possibilities: cities illuminated at night not with carbon dioxide-producing energy sources, but with real glow-in-the-dark trees that light up streets and sidewalks alike.

What started as a Glowing Plant campaign to raise just sixty-five thousand dollars has now ended with ten times that much in funding, all toward one purpose: naturally-glowing, biologically engineered plant life. The seed funding, in both senses, has been secured.

Glowing plants are not new, but crowd-funding the research and gene splicing,  aiming for sustained bioluminescence, and distributing the resulting plants all push into new (and apparently fertile) territories. The project team will start small, with household plants including glowing roses, and work up from there.

Concerned critics, however, have also noted that such ground-up, grass-roots synthetic biology experiments come with risks – including releasing new and untested plant strains into the wild.

With recommendations coming in from folks with Harvard to Singularity University on their resume, ranging to endorsements from known names including Cory Doctrow of BoingBoing, one hopes this team has their house in order. Still, even if the researchers in this case are careful and responsible, who is to say the next project of this type will be devoid of danger?