Philips ultra-thin OLED will light up your life

Forget the lamp; Philips is working on technology that will let you turn on your wall or your furniture.

While most of us associate OLED with crisp screens on our phones and — hopefully — TVs in the near future, Philips is exploring the technology as an illumination method.

The Philips Lumiblade GL350 is a flat OLED panel, just 2mm thick and 124.5mm square. Generating 120 lumens, it's the first genuinely light source for the home.

But Philips isn't content to leave it there. Speaking with Dezeen, Philips Dietmar Thomas said that he envisages a world where transparent OLED will replace windows, letting in natural light during the day before being turned on for illumination at night. And that's just the start.

"OLED will open up completely new ways where light can be introduced to the customer. In the far future, say five or 10 years or so, you'll paint the wall with a colour with OLEDs mixed into it, so when you apply a current, the whole wall lights up."

Dezeen made a video of the technology at the Lumiblade technology lab in Germany, which you can watch below or at the original article.