How To Change A Light Switch | Beginners Guide

hey what's up you guys it's scott with everyday home repairs and today i want to talk about changing out a light switch now this is the most approachable electrical project around your house but still very important that you have the knowledge the tools and you can do this safely now this is your own home in most jurisdictions it's okay to do your electrical work but that might be something that you want to look into call your local permitting office or your electrical inspector and say hey if this is my house can i do things like changing our light switch changing our receptacle in my area in illinois that is okay if it's your own house we have a good example today because we have a two-way switch here and a three-way switch in the same electrical box so it gives you a few different scenarios that hopefully match exactly what you're facing and my goal for this video is that you can assess your situation go to the home improvement store get all your supplies and make one trip not a two trip and especially not a three trip project so that's the goal and i'll talk about some of those things that hang you up and some of the don'ts which we have here in the box and then last thing if you want to kind of jump around you can look down in the timeline of this video and you'll see it's actually broken up into segments those are called chapters so you can jump around you'll see the title of each segment and what is reviewed within there so you can get to exact part that you need without further ado let's jump in and swap out this light switch so first things first you want to make sure you have no power going to this electrical box so you need to either pull your fuse or hit your circuit breaker now to confirm that we have no power what i'm going to use is what's called a non-contact voltage tester this one specifically is an ncvt 3p i think it's a great diy non-contact voltage tester because it has also a built-in light which helps you out when you're changing light switches because you're probably not going to have light to that area so you can look down in the description you'll see this tool and the other tools i showed today including the light switches we use all with links for your reference now when using a non-contact voltage tester what you want to do is test on a known source that you know is hot so you know the voltage tester is working and detects when there is power to that electrical box once you confirm now you can come back and check to see if you have power at these light switches and then that will give you the confirmation you need to proceed with the job now technically you can do this whole job with a small flat head screwdriver but you especially need one here at the start to remove all of your screws that mount the face plate so again to make this a one tripper for you to not add to your job what i do recommend is you take a razor blade and you score the outside at the interface between the wall and your face plate what that's going to do is it's going to break loose any of the old paint that you might have between the face plate and the wall so when you take the face plate off it's not going to tear the drywall paper and make damage to your wall making this a longer job so once that's done then you can just pop off your faceplate all right so we confirm that our non-contact voltage tester works on a known hot outlet or switch face plate is off now you can test to see if you're picking up any power within the box that we're going to work on so we're confirmed with no power i'll also check that once i kind of move the switches out just to double check i'm not missing anything inside i want to show you this is a two-way switch and this is a three-way switch i'm going to remove four screws again you could use an a flat head a lot of people use a phillips technically the best screwdrivers for this are either a number one robertson which has a square bit head that works great or i use the number one milwaukee which is a built-in flathead and robertson together so it gives you the best hold and easiest to use so this will give you a direct comparison between a two-way and a three-way switch so this is a two-way switch that means there's only one switch on the circuit that will turn on or off the lights and as such you just have a hot from your line from your power coming in and then a load this would be going out to your light switch then your neutral for the light is just passing through here within this wire nut and has nothing to do with the actual switch itself now with a three-way it's just a little more complex where you have your line coming in here and then the two travelers would go to the other switch on the circuit so this light circuit has two switches and either one can turn on or off and that's why you need the three-way switch for it to work properly so you have the hot coming in and then you'll have your two traveler wires usually those will be black and red but every install can be a little different now before i show you how to swap out this two way let's talk about what i don't like here one i do not recommend what's called speed wiring that's where you strip 14 gauge wire usually you can only fit 14 gauge and you just press it in and then a tab holds it in place and that is what connects to the terminal i'm not a big fan of that and i'm especially not a big fan of mixing side wiring with speed wiring and also we're missing one of our screws this does demonstrate what some people don't know is that if you use speed wiring the screw itself is actually has nothing to do with holding it in because there's a tab internal that holds that wire in but what i'll end up doing is i'm going to do side wiring on both of these for the new switch additionally on this three-way this one also for the red traveler uses speed wiring the screw is still intact but i do recommend to tighten down that screw just so you don't have anything hanging out more than it needs to be that would raise the chances of a short possibly if something is in the box and close to this terminal so next up we'll be swapping out this two-way if you have a three-way just remember to pick up the correct hardware for a three-way switch and then you will make sure that you mark your travelers compared to your hot line coming in so when you connect that back up with the new switch everything is in the correct orientation okay so since we're not going to do anything with this three way i'm just gonna reinstall that switch before swapping out the two-way and showing you how to wire that up which is pretty straightforward i want to make sure again that you take one trip to the home improvement store so let's talk about a few of the selections that you're going to need to make to make sure you get the right parts first up let's talk about color so there are three main colors of switches and face plates you'll have white then you'll go to light almond and then almond so you can see the difference there between now when you have them side by side it's pretty easy to see the white versus light almond versus almond but if you just had light almond depending on your paint on your walls this can look pretty white especially if you don't have anything else to compare it to so it might be worth taking your old switch maybe you already uninstalled it or your face plate down to the home improvement store to make sure you get the right color now we already talked about switches in terms of two-way and three-way which you'll want to know which one you need i'm just going with a standard residential grade eaton two-way switch now you'll see that there are different levels you can kind of get up to the premium ranges honestly with the switches this is a dollar 88 down at lowe's this isn't eaton eaton's a good brand i think leviton's great pass and seymour is good also goes by the name legron depending on where you're going you're going to see different brands all those are actually good quality switches but i would not go with anything other than the residential grade on light switches now i don't have the same feeling for receptacles or outlets but on light switches you're not going to get too much more if you go to the commercial grade level and then finally we've been looking at the switches with the large rectangular rocker switch these are called decora series or decorator series and that is a certain type it's a little more modern look but everything we've shown thus far and will go over in the install would be the same for a standard toggle switch which is a little bit older looking design but is still widely used so just make sure you're getting the correct one and also getting the correct face plate because those will be a little bit different for decor series versus a standard light switch so hopefully that's enough information to make sure you get the right stuff from that aisle because when you first go into electrical aisle at a large home improvement store there are a lot of selections so you do need to kind of whittle down to where you're looking you'll see the sections you'll have a white section you'll have a light almond section you have an almond section pretty much the same selections throughout each of those three sections but the white will have a little bit more selection because it's the most widely used let me know if you guys have any questions as you approach these projects jump down the comments and myself or others actually will jump in there and help you out so let's swap out this two-way switch now since i have plenty of extra wire i'm just going to start off fresh by cutting both of these wires now this is 12 gauge wire but if you're not sure what you have you can compare a nickel and dime if it's the thickness of a nickel it's 12 gauge if it's the thickness of a dime it is 14 gauge now your switch will come with a stripping guide that gives you the length for which you should strip if you're using the push-ins i don't recommend that so you're actually gonna go about three quarters of an inch strip so we can use the side terminals and do side wiring okay so then we want to make j j-hooks and what we'll use is this small hole in the side we'll put the wire just barely through it and then we'll wrap it around the outside and then that will make our j-hook for side wiring so we have a reference for top and then we want to go in the clockwise direction around the screw so why you'd want to do that is while you tighten this if it is in the counterclockwise direction it will kind of push the wire out as you're tightening the screw see how that kind of pulls that in as you're tightening it then you'll do your second one same way and then if you had a bare copper wire for ground you connect that here same clockwise direction but a switch does not have to have a ground and then we'll just tuck those wires back and then reinstall the switch and then as you tighten this in just make sure that this front surface is flush with the wall and face plate if it's slightly angled you can kind of use your screwdriver and angle that lightly in and what you're doing there especially with 12 gauge wire you'll kind of push the switch left to right so you're just trying to get that centered up so i will not tighten both of these because first i want to put the face plate up once you have everything lined up then you'll go ahead and tighten them down so they're securely in place then you'll take your face plate and just tighten the four screws i like the eaton face plates because it really retains these small mounting screws makes it an easier job now if you want a pro finish you'll either line up your screws vertical or horizontal but all consistently now these are unbreakable face plates but you won't want to over tighten one it pulls the face plate in and makes it look bad and also depending on which one you got you can crack it so at the end of the job if you over tighten you crack your face plate and then you run into the home improvement store again but that is it now we're back in business so i now have the breaker back on and i can confirm that the light switch is working so this project is complete now for references for all the tools we use and also this light switch from eaton that we use you can see that down in the description right below the video you'll see all the links to the tools and the light switch swapping out light switch is a great first project when it comes to getting into home electrical but any home electrical project you want to make sure you're doing that safe and you are comfortable with electrical if not i do recommend calling in the professionals so let me know if you guys have any questions down in the comments i'll jump in there and help you out as much as i can and also before you take off if you haven't already subscribed to our channel do that by hitting the red subscribe button and bell notification and then you'll get notified as we have multiple videos coming out per week to help you with repairs and improvements around your house and we'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 119,953

Rating: 4.8830128 out of 5

Keywords: 2-way light switch, 3-way light switch, light switch wiring, home electrical wiring basics

Id: FM8_yHlyqR4

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021