Its just as it sounds. Why have to take lamps and arrange them to provide the lighting? Why not have a ceiling that can act like a big ol' TV, and illuminate us, and the whole room? Choose your own colors, and maybe even a screen saver option for like a starry night, or a clear blue day. I mean, its not exactly a new science. You take a screen, not even glass but like a projection screen or even a filmy type that can cover the surface, and have the image either project on it, or make it like a those lcd displays where it runs thru so it to shine down on us. That would be awesome!
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Although it might be useful in certain circumstances to have general lighting I prefer a room to have light only at specific areas. Large screens are expensive and have limited lifetimes. With the new less expensive organic LEDs this might be possible and even useful but it's a matter of individual taste.
I've thought about this idea too. LEDs might be great, but they're really expensive. The easiest way to achieve the glowing ceiling effect is to mount lights on the walls that are aimed up at the ceiling. I've experimented with this quite a bit. It works nicely, but it does take more power to light the room well.
Another option might be Light emitting capacitor panels, but they might not be bright enough. Maybe if you covered the ceiling and the walls it might work.
As for the basic idea of the whole ceiling glowing, I think the effect would be really cool, but hard to do. I think those capacitor panels are neat--I've never seen them before. Maybe they could work.
You run into the problem of not having standard sized-rooms, so you'll need to custom-trim the glow panels. Not easy with LED's. Also, this huge panel would be too big to handle, so you'll have to design ways to make them modular--split into many lighter, easy to install parts. I think this is why indirect room lighting is popular--light the ceiling from a hidden channel and let the white ceiling reflect the light.
Also, having sheet-rock on the ceiling behind (above) the fixture provides some mass to quiet and damp the house. If your ceiling was a one-mm thick LEC panel, I'd be afraid it would 'flap' when the kids jump upstairs.
So, I think it's clear why builders feel better off with fixtures actually mounted on the ceiling.
I wonder if it would be possible to paint a ceiling with phosphorescent (glow-in-the-dark) paint, and have some sort of sensor so lights would "charge" it, then dim or go out to let the ceiling glow. Once it lost its glow, the lights would come on again to recharge the glow-paint. I don't know if there's enough light involved in this method to actually save electricity. Anyone know more about this?
What you could do as a cheap alternative is create a wallpaper that contains millions of strands of fibre optics and provide a light source.