In Australia, a racecar pulses with ribbons of light synchronized with the driver’s heartbeat. It is a very effective stunt supposed to show the thrill of driving the Lexus RC-F. Chased by a helicopter on a dark track at night the side of the car pulsates back and forth with bars like the lights on an early graphic equalizer.

In London, a cyclist speeds past a car creeping through an junction. The driver avoids a collision, because an eerie glowing green bike frame catches his eye just in time. This time it is a proof of concept, but one that you could buy soon.

A world of glowing vehicles fits that old cliché of the opening scene from a sci-fi movie, but these are real applications of paint that lights up at the touch of button. The future could be even brighter if the wonderfully named Darkside Scientific gets its way. Its electroluminescent coating is already being used to make the ultimate customized rides. It is being put to particularly good effect on airbrushed motorcycle tanks, and Darkside has created a dramatic LumiLor car wheel.

It could make emergency vehicles more visible, and it could even change the way we illuminate our homes. For the bike, a trendy folding Brompton popular with London commuters, it is all about safety and visibility.

“The other day I was driving home and I was turning right, and a lady in fully reflective gear cut in front of me,” recounts Shawn Mastrian, CEO of Darkside Scientific.

Because Mastrian was turning, his headlights were angled right, and there was no light for the cyclist’s gear to reflect, and the front and rear lights on the bike did not help with side visibility.

“I almost ran her over, and she had all the safety gear that is available.”

So a glowing bike has obvious benefits. All it needs is a power source hidden in the frame – a battery that can be charged at night. The Brompton looks chrome during the day, and then with the flick of a switch glows at night.

Applications of glowing paint could potentially be far wider, in the transport industry and beyond.

“We don’t know whether we’re a paint company or a light company,” says Mastrian.

The company was founded in 2011 around LumiLor, an electroluminescent paint. It was developed by an inventor with an electronics background, whose family owned a body shop. He had painted a motorcycle for a friend with traditional glow in the dark paint. It looked good, but not good enough; he wanted to be able to control the light.

LumiLor can be sprayed onto surfaces using standard body shop equipment. It does not look like much until an alternating current is passed through it. Then the entire coated surface glows with a cold, greenish light.

Electroluminescence has been used to light up car dashboards for decades. Chrysler boasted of it in 1960 model year cars, calling it Panelescent lighting.

Traditionally coatings have been rigid though, and suited to small areas. The new paint is different because it can be applied to almost any surface (although metal needs priming first to insulate it) and in any shape.

The way we like to describe it is that you can turn any object into a lamp without changing its form or function.

“The way we like to describe it is that you can turn any object into a lamp without changing its form or function,” says Mastrian.

“When we paint a Lexus, or a bike tank, or helmets, they are still fundamentally still a car, a motorcycle, a safety device, and we haven’t changed that in any way,” he says.

“With an application of our coating system over the top, we are allowing that object to produce light, and you can do that as a primary lighting feature, as a safety feature, or as an artistic feature.”

The company is working on research into more colours (an orange is nearly production ready) and ways to make the paint glow more brightly. A brilliant white is the most desirable as it can be ‘tuned’ to change the hue easily and top coated with a transparent layer to add more colour or detail.

As well as potentially being a new trend in car exteriors, the paint could also be used inside as an accent marker, to aid visibility, or assist with access. Imagine switches that light up as and when you might need them for example. Door handles could glow, but only when you turn the engine off, and they could do so without the need for an LED, a reflector, or a diffuser. They would just be painted.

Application of the glowing paint does need an expert touch, but the company is running training workshops for people from around the world at its base in Las Vegas. Look out for a paintshop near you to be offering it soon, and start imagining where to apply it before multicoloured wraps start making your custom ride look so 2014.

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