How about a rug that can guide you to your bedroom during night time without ever turning on the lights, protect your toes during a fast trip to the bathroom or maybe even as a replacement for the night light in your child's room? Well, you could buy the next best thing, the Footlume rug which lights up while you walk on it. This would surely be one of the future floor fashion devices found in everyone's home, however you will have to wait a bit before it will be marketed.

The Footlume rug was developed by Leona Dean and Zoe Robson, two engineering students from the London South Bank University, and makes use of rechargeable batteries which power the lights of the rug in relation to the weight of the person walking on it. The rug produces light through electroluminescence which uses electric fields to determine the light-producing chemical to emit electromagnetic radiation in the visible spectrum.

Alternative means to produce luminescence involve photoluminescence which uses substances that absorb light to experience an excited state after which light is re-emitted into the medium, and chemoluminencence which produces light during chemical reactions between light-producing substances.

"The glow that the rug emits is very soft. It can provide ambient mood lighting or flash in time to music as a talking point at a party," said co-inventor Leona Dean. Although the Footlume rug is only in the prototype stage for the time being, its inventors believe that it will most likely be commercialized in the near future and even started their own company in the hope that the device will go into production as soon as possible, namely Zolo Designs.

Dean argues that "It could be helpful as a child's night light, to help the elderly to find their way in the dark, or even to light the way to bed after a night in the pub without waking up your partner. It is pressure operated and runs on very little power form re-chargeable batteries, so it can be used anywhere in the home as it requires no installation."

The Footlume rug, developed by the two students for a college course, is expected to be presented this month at the Daily Mail Ideal Home Show in London.