How-To: Replace a Light Fixture
By Sean O'Hara
Modern fixtures like this one come with a handy plug that wires up to the black and white wires. This lets you do the hard part of connecting the wires without having to hold the fixture in mid air for the next ten minutes. Connect white to white and black to black and with a little twist cap action you’re ready to move on to mounting the fixture hardware.
Connect the plug on the back plate to the plug on the other end of the fixture and connect the ground wire located on the fixture itself (normally a naked copper wire) to the same green screw used earlier. The pulg provides the power and the ground, well, supplies the ground. Then all that’s left is to slide the fixture over the mounting back plate and fasten it in whatever manner is required – in our case two decorative screw type knobs.
Then screw in some bulbs, go turn the breaker back, on and viola! — you’ve just successfully navigated the install. Even if it’s the your first time doing a project of this nature it doesn’t take very long to do and once you cut the power to the fixture you’re not in much danger of hurting yourself.
A good quality fixture will last for decades and can change the look, feel, and function of a room entirely, so don’t be afraid to jump in and try it.
This kind of upgrade doesn’t have to be hard on the wallet either. We picked up our example in the clearance bin at the local big box for $19.99 marked down from $79 and didn’t need any extra brackets or mounting hardware to install it –so the price for the entire project actually stayed at around $20.
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March 10th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Hah… Kick ass.. You guys have some kind of crazy timing..
I just went to Home Depot this past week and picked up two new fixtures. I ALMOST picked up a clearance ceiling fan for the living room too, but the light on it was one of those circular fluorescent ring style bulbs - so I wasn’t convinced it was going to be right enough.
In any case, I just installed them this afternoon in my bedroom and the hallway. Then tonight I sit down to read toolmonger and I see this. Too much.
I’d never seen that style of clip for the electrical connection before. That’s a new one to me. I actually have an old cut up wire coat hanger in my “electrical” toolbox that I use to hang a fixture from the box while I make the connections. That way the fixture isn’t hanging from the electrical cables. Then once those are done I remove the coat hanger and install the fixture.
Also, I made mention of my electrical toolbox. It’s an old tackle box style toolbox and it contains all of my electrical-related tools. I find this is easier than taking the roll-away into the house. That said, besides my lineman’s pliers, electrical tape, crimpers, wire strippers, a nice flat and phillips head screwdriver, etc. I also have old bits/scraps of left over wire and/or other bits and pieces. I’ve got a varied selection of wire nuts, etc. The strips of cable come in handy at times.
About two weeks ago I needed to install a new 230v fusible switch in my laundry room for my driver. I had the outlet coming off of the old switch through a bit of conduit. When I installed the new switch, the cable from the outlet needed to go to a different location in the box. So I pulled out a nice piece of 10 gauge wire that I had left over from another job. It was about 4 feet long, but I only needed about a foot to make the connection I needed.
In any case.. that’s my little bit of electrical advice
- and like Sean said - can’t emphasize this enough. TURN OFF THE BREAKER. Another nice piece to have, and I can’t recall if it’s been reviewed here already or not is an inductive electrical tester. It’ll tell you if you have any live wires in the box without needing to make contact with the copper. Just by putting it against the wire, it’ll beep if it detects a live current. I’ve found that invaluable to ensure that there’s no current in the box. Oftentimes the fixture I was going to work on had no power, but there were other wires that were running through it to other outlets and/or fixtures in the room. So it was nice to check the other wires before I stuck my hands in there.
March 10th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
This is similar to what I have. But mine isn’t by fluke.
::link::
Home Depot is where I got mine. Right now they have this one:
::link:: although it’s not exactly like mine.. But this’ll get the job done.
March 11th, 2007 at 7:02 am
It’s more fun when you pull the old fixture and find no box…
I’ve found them screwed driectly into the paneling in my house (yes paneling). I’ve been slowly replacing it (and just about everything else).
I also like how they used lamp wiring as conductor for switch jumpers.
March 11th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I replaced one set of wall sconces (basement) last weekend, and hope to hit another set next weekend. Thanks for the good tutorial, fortunately my installs were both straight replacements onto the mounting box.
March 12th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
One thing I’ve learned that may be helpful is when you’re joining the white to white wires and black to black, wind them around each other clockwise so when you put the cap over them, the tightening of the cap will further tighten connection between the wires (as opposed to winding the wires counterclockwise so the cap will tend to separate them).
Same thing applies to winding Teflon tape around a plumbing joint.
March 18th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Like Donald, I’ve found fixtures with no boxes — especially outdoors, where I discovered Romex embedded in the masonry’s mortar, and the old fixtures just screwed into lead anchors! And the new fixtures’ mounts are 90 degrees off… meaning new anchors, just to mount some shallow surface-mount boxes.
You may not see a ground wire in some boxes, if it’s all metal conduit. If your boxes or conduit are plastic, you darn well better have a ground wire, otherwise, just screw the fixture’s ground wire to the box — often there’s a cross-brace that has a green screw on it.
I really like the clip-on wires — that would save a lot of headaches.
Last word of advice on fixture selection: pick ones you can put CFT bulbs into, meaning you probably don’t want to be able to see the bulbs, but you also have to make sure the fixture isn’t on a dimmer for most CFTs.
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Good article, great details, but the obsessive-about-electrical safety part of me would really love to see you include having folks actually test the wires with a meter before proceeding, especially if the fixture is being replaced because it didn’t work, thus rendering the “turn the switch off and on” test useless.
Actually I think a how-to article just on using a volt-ohm meter would be great (I’m a newbie, so be kind if this is something you’ve done recently). Maybe just a run through of some of the basic tasks you might use a digital multimeter for, from testing battery strength to testing circuits to testing audio cables (and don’t forget to mention which setting the meter should be on for each task - I’ve seen articles that failed to mention this, which makes it useless for a newbie), and reminding folks of safety issues that they might not always consider, such as if there are two sets of wires coming into an outlet, you have to test both since it might be connected to two seperate circuits (I learned this one the hard way - ouch!).
March 1st, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I am trying to replace a bathroom wall fixture for the first time. My backplate for the new fixture is round, but my electrical box with all the wires is rectangular. The two don’t seem to fit together. The backplate is smaller than the electrical box. I understand how to do the electrical part, but what about making this backplate fit? The holes don’t align. Someone please tell me what to do next. Thanks!