How To Wire A 3-Way Switch System Explained! (2022) | Video For Beginners DIY Step By Step Tutorial!

on this episode i'm going to be showing you three ways on how to wire a three-way switch stay tuned [Music] welcome to fix's house if you're new to the channel please consider pressing the subscribe and notification bell so you can always be in tune on diys how-to videos and product reviews that i do within this channel before we get into today's video i'd like to put a quick disclaimer out there that all the electrical videos that i make in this channel is for educational informational and entertainment purposes only my electrical codes in my area may be different from your electrical codes so always make sure that you have the proper permits all the up-to-date with all your electrical and building codes because codes are constantly changing all the time so make sure you are up to date and also if you're hesitant to do any type of electrical work please hire a professional certified electrician and also working with electricity is very very dangerous so make sure that you always turn off the power from your circuit breaker with that being said the full detail of my disclaimer is on the description down below let's get into today's video so you're probably wondering why do you need a three-way switch one good example is for example you have a staircase and you're located at the bottom you want to turn on the light right when you get up your stairs you want to turn off the light that's one great simple example with that being said on today's video i'm going gonna be showing you three different wiring methods the first one is being the three-way switch with the light fixture at the end of run meaning that the power source is starting off to the switch first and then it ends at the light fixture the second method is when the light fixture is at the start of run meaning that the electricity is passing onto the light fixture first and then it ends to the switch the third method is when the light fixture is on the middle of run just like what you see here and that's when it's actually located between the two switches and it's being controlled that way now this part of the video i'm going to go over all the tools and equipment that i'll be using for this project the first tool that i'll be going over is the volt claw i like using this tool because it's so nice working inside of the jbox you can use this to push wire in without having to use your fingers to dig in there and you can have a further reach you can pull push twist wire and you can also make loops on your wiring or hooks so the screwdriver that i like to use for electrical is this insulated screwdriver it has a nice grip insulated and it is by clean tool it has a switchable blade just like what you see here you can use a flat head or a phillips and you just twist it to release and lock very importantly i love using a voltage detector i highly recommend you get one of these because even though you turn off the power on your breaker use this as a backup just in case to make sure that there is really no power running through your cables wire stripper long nose pliers utility knife linemen pliers and use this fish tape now this is if you're feeding wiring through your studs before i used to use wire nuts once i got to know these wiggle wire connectors i never went back to wire nuts because these are awesome you can there's a three five and two there's other combinations as well but all you have to do is release and pretty much open up these levers insert the wire through and then just close them and they're so easy to use and it makes the job a lot cleaner you don't have to damage your wire by making doing twists or whatnot and they are reusable so highly recommend you get wego wire connectors there are many j boxes to choose from when i mean jbox i mean junction box or electrical box there are new new work with the nails you got the adjustable ones for also known as old work but you can adjust the the depth on these but they screw on to the stud and you also have ones that are you know just put place against the stud and you have ones that are old work which pretty much sandwiches to your drywall and you can locate these anywhere so there are many information inside of your jbox so take a look before you buy them make sure that they are ul certified and you have all the information right here here this one says 18 cubic inches in volume and if you're using these gauge wires 14 12 and 10 it tells you how many wires can fit inside this box like for this one where today we're going to be using a 14 gauge to light this wiring and we're going to be using the 14 so that means that you can fit nine wires in there so let's just say you have a 14 2 that comes with a black and a white and a ground to that total of three so you do the math and just make sure that you check it what you need for what work you're doing we are going to be using a three-way switch control this differs from a single pole switch now this is a single pull i know we've been doing a lot of videos on single pole switches but you see the difference this one has two terminals this one has three terminals you have the com terminal which is also known as the com common terminal and you have two travel terminals on the top just like we see here and to do a three-way switch you need to have two of these available another difference with the three-way switch compared to the single pole is that if you look at the single pole it has a label right there on and off okay on and off on the label but if you look on the switch itself on the three-way there is no label it's blank the reason being is they can be left on any position depending on which way each one is controlled it says right there 15 amp 15 amp at the back there's also a gauge notch on the bottom where you can you know place your wire gauge how much copper you need and how much you need to strip off just for future references they also come with ground if you have any questions on concerning these or any tools that i use on this video please leave me a comment down below i'd be glad to answer them lastly we're going to be using a 14 gauge wire so 14 gauge is the size of the wire we are going to be using a 14 2 and a 14 3. 14 2 means that there's going to be a neutral and a hot and one ground 14 3 means you have a hot you have a neutral a red right here and also a ground wire the reason why we're using a 14 gauge wires because these are the gauges that are most commonly used for light fixtures and we are going to be using a 15 amp three-way switch and also our power is going to be feeding from a 15 amp breaker again i always specify this on my videos that when you're using a 14 gauge wire you're gonna it's gonna be coming out from a 15 amp breaker okay so if you have a 20 amp that's you don't want to use these because it will overheat and if you're using a 20 amp you should use a 12-2 these are a lot thicker than a 14 gauge wire okay so let's say that your your wiring has already existing um 12-2 double check what power it's coming from if it's coming from a 20 amp power you use this but if you have a 15 amp power you use this but you can use a 12 2 from coming out from a 15 amp breaker just don't use a 14 gauge wire on the 20 amp breaker okay so i hope that makes sense i hope i didn't confuse you on that i'll leave all the information right here right in front of you can pause this so you can get a example or what i'm really talking about written and make it clear for you again if that confuses you please leave me a comment down below i'm also going to be using a ceiling j box this is for a light fixture this is just a mock-up so i'm going to be putting and placing it right beside this jbox so now we're going to be feeding our power supply this is a 14.2 cable again this is feeding from a 15 amp breaker power source for this first example we call this the three-way switch with a fixture at the end of the run so that means that the power is going to the switches first and ends at the light fixture what i like to always suggest is that before you insert this onto and start wiring it onto the j box you always want to put your pigtails first to make it easier on yourself in this case we are going to be putting two ground pigtails on this i'm going to be using a 14 2 gauge pigtail again if you're using a 14 cable you always want to make make sure you match up your pigtails with the same gauge since we're going to make a loop on each and there's two ways to do this i like to use volt claw on there's an option there where you can just put it right there through this hole and then you just bend it like that super fast super easy and it looks good every time okay but you can use your needle nose pliers again i just prefer this because it has a better loop again all the tools on this video i'll leave it on the description down below including this tool take your three-way switch whenever you're attaching a loop you always make sure that you're going in a clockwise position so this wire is going on a clockwise because we are going to be turning it and tightening it on a clockwise position okay so make sure that it is nice and secure and we are going to do the same thing for the second three-way switch and tighten it down two pigtails right here now we're going to take our 14-2 power supply and feed it onto the first j box now i like to label these just for reference so i like to put that this is a 14 2. everywhere feeding this you always want to leave about six to eight inches of wire i'm gonna take the hot wire from the power source and i'm going to make a loop on that i'm going to take my first three-way switch i'm going to take that hot wire from my power source and i'm going to hook it onto the common terminal which is the black screw i'm going to hook that up and make sure you tighten that down so i'm just going to leave this on an open position i'm going to let this float for a little bit because i'm going to run a 14 3 wire now inside this j box our first j box and our second j box we are going to run a 14 3 3 wire with ground to each box feed it through this hole through my stud i like to separate the one group of wire with the other group of wires that we don't get all mixed up take our wire stripper and i'm going to strip about 5 8. the only wires that we're going gonna loop is the red and the black we're gonna leave the ground and the white one unlooped take our three-way switch and now we're going to take our 14 3 black wire and we're going to hook it onto our first traveler terminal so we'll just label this traveler number one traveler number two you always want to hook everything up on the same including on the same on the other switch you want to make it uniform just so you don't confuse yourself again we are gonna put this on terminal one okay we hooked it up right there and then we're gonna screw it in now we're gonna take our 14 3 red wire and put it on terminal number two make sure it's always on the clockwise we're gonna connect the grounds to each other i always want to orientate the wire so that they are nicely flowing and not just webbed okay so move your wires accordingly so they're not all over the place so that's a good trick doesn't matter if you bend your wire just to go through like hoops and whatnot you always want to make it look nice and clean separate don't just criss cross these wires it'll save you on the long run and it'll help you when you start pushing all the wires in now we're going to be using the wego two wire connector open up the levers connect the neutral wires together make sure that there is no exposed copper onto the wire connector make sure it's insulated all the way up to the lever we are going to connect all the ground wire together including the one on the switch right here okay so that's all connected together again let me recap on what i just did again i like to do recaps on this video just to make everything nice and clear i do apologize if i sound like i'm repeating myself over and over but i want to draw a clear picture for you friends before we go up to the next step all right so here we go we have our 14 2 2 wire with ground power source going through our first box we have our first three wire three-way switch the black power source coming from the 14-2 is feeding onto the common terminal which is the black again i have this 1433 wire with ground feeding into this first j box and that 14 3 black wire like what you see right there is feeding onto traveler terminal number one and then the 14 3 red wire is feeding onto traveler terminal number two we have all the grounds connected together and then we have our neutral wires all connected together so we have the first three-way switch installed let's move on to the second three-way switch now i labeled again so you don't get confused we're going to be running a 14-3 from the first switch running to this box okay let's run it through this box the only ones that we're going to make a hook on is the red and the black let's make a loop on the red loop on the black see how easily you can loop it with this tool really love this tool okay we're gonna leave the neutral and the ground alone for now now let's introduce the second three-way switch i like to add that sometimes the most confusing part of this is trying to just match the traveler wire so just pay attention to where these are going and make sure that this is matched up to the same terminals like what you did on switch number one okay so switch number two we're just gonna copy the same exact locations where we inputted the red and the black for example on the first switch we put the red on the right traveler so that means we have to mimic that so let's put the reds red on the red on the right side as well so let's mirror take this put it on the red term let's put it on the right terminal traveler traveler number two and now we have our black wire so if we look back on switch number one our black is on the left side of the traveler on the first switch so we're just going to copy it put it on this side see the red is on the right the black is on the left make sure that those match don't mismatch because that will mess up your circuit for now we're gonna leave the ground wire open the ground wire from the this one open and the neutral wire open i'll go back into that one i'm going to be using a 14 2 which means one ground hot and neutral i'm going to feed the 14 2 into switch box number two so now we fed this 14 2 from the light fixture j box to switch number two j box let's go back to jbox number two with three-way switch number two see how we fed everything here to the travelers now we have one common terminal left see that black screw right there now that's the only one we're going to hook up last with this so this 14 2 wire going to the light fixture this one we're gonna loop this is the only one that we're looping move this black wire to three-way switch number two on the common terminal and then we'll just tighten that up take all our ground wires again let's try to orient it so that it will be nice and neat like so take our three three-way wire connect wiggle wire connector there you go i'm gonna leave that open so you can see it take our two wire connectors now this is the neutral wire going to the light fixture and this is the neutral wire coming from the 14-3 easy just like that now before i go do a full recap again let's wire this easy part now this is the easiest part right here we're gonna go and wire the light fixture itself for ground match it with the ground black wire match it with your black wire take your neutral match it with the neutral boom this pretty much completes the circuit i'm not going to hook this up to the j box so we can do a final recap of this first method which is the three-way switch with fixture at the end of the run so let me do a full breakdown to make everything nice and neat and for you to understand we got our power source coming from a 15 amp power source using a 14 to 2 wire with ground now that is running on our first box going to our first three-way switch now we're only going to talk about the power source wire the hot wire from the power source is connected to the black com terminal on the switch and the neutral wire from the power source is attached to the 14 3 wire that is going to the j box and the ground wire from our power source is also connected with the rest of the ground wire from the 14 3 and the power switch which is j box which is pigtailed right there now we have our 14 3 wire now 14 2 14 3 wire going into the first j box that red wire from the 14 3 is going to the traveler terminal on the right side of the switch and the black wire from the 14 3 is going to the left side and that's what we call traveler terminal number one okay don't get that confused you can move this around but if you do move it around it has to match this one has to mirror okay and then the ground wire from the 143 connected to here and then the white neutral wire from the 143 is connected to the power source neutral they're all connected right there so if you if you want me to if you want to pause it right here pause it right now so you can see where that's traveling okay hope that makes sense now we are going to go to follow the 14 3 wire to the second j box to the second three-way switch okay so like what i told you it has to mirror the black wire from the 14-3 wire is connected to the first travel terminal on the switch right there identical left side left side the red wire from the 14 3 is feeding to the right side traveler terminal number two right side right side the ground wire is feeding to all the ground wires going through this j box okay same thing here the ground wire is going to connecting all to the ground wire now let's get back to this one we have to go to the next wire that's coming coming through here we have to switch back to 14 2 wire with ground and that's connected to our light fixture to the second j box the neutral wire from the light fixture is connected to the neutral wire from the 14 3 just like so the black wire from the light fixture is connected now to the common terminal which is the black wire okay hopefully that makes sense let me repeat again the black wire from here the 14 2 is connected to the common terminal of switch three-way switch number two the ground wire is connected there also to all the ground wires they're all connected together and now the neutral wires from the 14 3 and the neutral wire from the 14 2 is all connected together and then for our light fixture just connect the neutral the hot and the ground so i know i've been i know i've babbled a lot i know i talk too much i'm just trying to make sure that you understand and see where this is all going feel free to keep repeating this so that you know how it works okay now that we have everything connected i'm gonna connect it now these switches to the j box and then we're gonna turn on the power use my volt claw like what i mentioned before this is a great tool for pushing wire in like so make sure when you push these wires in just do it nicely and carefully this end to twist wire and orient it the way you want it in there okay we have live power running through this so let's pretend that this switch is located in the bottom of the stairs this is located at the top of the stairs i want to go up the stairs i want to turn on the light boom it's on now i go upstairs and i want to turn off the light now boom and it works vice versa okay works vice versa that my friend is our first method which is the three-way switch with the fixture at the end of the run and the power source going to the switches first okay let me know in the comments section below what you think and if you have any questions now let's get to method number two now that we went over the three-way switch where the light fixture is at the end of the run meaning that the power source is going to the switches first going to the light fixture we're gonna go now to method number two where the power source instead of going to the light switch is now going to the light fixture first and then it ends at the switches okay so let's get to that method so once again we are our power source is coming from a 15 amp breaker source and it is running on a 14 to 2 wire with ground wire what we're going to do now is we're going to feed this to the light fixture j box 14 2 with ground power source going to the light fixture j box we're going to take our 1433 wire with ground and we're going to feed it to our light fixture to jbox number one but now we're going to feed this and this is 14 3 wire we're at the checkpoint let's do a quick recap here is your 14 2 with ground power source coming from a 15 amp breaker power source and then we are feeding it to our light fixture j box i've separated that wire right there so we don't get it mixed up now we are introducing a 14 3 with ground because that has the red neutral hot ground feeding through the j the same j box of the light fixture and that's feeding to our first j box with our first three-way light switch three-way wiggle wire connector okay and then we're going to take our ground wire from our light fixture connect it there as well there you go i'm gonna try to put it on separately as possible so we're gonna take our white wires and we're gonna connect them all together again this is the power source neutral we got our neutral wire coming from the 14 3 gauge wire and now we got our neutral that's coming from our light fixture okay and take our hot wire from our power source and connect it to the red 14 3 wire going to the first three-way light switch take our hot wire from our light fixture and connect that to the black wire to the 14-3 with ground going to the first light fixture okay i know that might sound very confusing but i'll break it down once again okay but let's just do a recap of what we just did here is our power source right here going to this light fixture j box we are taking first all the ground wire the ground wire from our power source the ground wire from our 14 3 and the ground wire from our light fixture all connected into one now we're going to go to the neutral the neutral wire from the light fixture the neutral wire from our 14 3 with ground and the neutral from our power source is all connected together now here's where it gets tricky the hot wire from our power source and our red wire from our 14 3 wire is connected together and our black hot wire from our 14 3 ground wire and our black wire from our light fixture is connected together so i'm gonna feel free to pause this and see and let me zoom in so you can see where it's all connected and that's if you have any questions on that leave it in the comments now we are gonna go and follow the line now to the first three-way switch j-box so with that being said let's introduce our first three-way switch as you can see i've already attached and pigtailed the ground wire so with our 14-3 wire the only wire that we're gonna loop is the hot wire just like that now we're gonna take our three-way switch and we're gonna loop this hot wire onto the com terminal and then we're gonna secure that so let's put the neutral and the red wire to the side connect all the ground wire but i'm gonna we're gonna connect another ground wire from another wire coming in so i'm going to use a three-way wire connector okay so this one's going to be left for the wire coming in later i'm just breaking this out one one step at a time i don't want to over um overfeed you with so much wires coming in that you get confused we're now gonna introduce another 14 3 wire okay 14 3 so that's neutral hot red and ground and we're gonna feed it into the first j box once again okay so let's feed it on the bottom this wire is actually going to run from j box to j box so let's take this through the stud and feed it through the second j box which is going to connect to our second three-way switch just like that okay now before we get to that one let's focus on this once again let's zoom in let's label this 14 3 so we know which wire goes or runs through which we stripped all the wires 5 8 on each end now let's go to the easiest one take the ground wire now to your newly installed 14 3 wire and feed it remember when i said use a three-way wire connector that's where we're gonna feed now our ground okay so now we have all our grounds connected together don't worry i'll do a recap on everything i connected just like that so the only thing that we're going to loop on the wires that we just inserted which is the 1433 wire with ground is the black wire and the red wire so take your volt claw and then loop it just like so and loop this one as well okay now let's put the neutral wire to the side take our red wire and insert it to our number one traveler screw terminal so now we're going to take our hot wire from the newly installed 1433 wire with ground and install it to traveler terminal number two on the right side now again you can mix match it it doesn't matter which one goes just make sure that you follow this one the same orientation to the next switch but so we don't get confused i'm putting my red on the left and the black on the right and we're gonna tighten that down which leaves us now with the neutral wire from our 14 3 going to the second switch our neutral wire from our light fixture and our red wire from our light fixture notice how i separate it so you don't get confused that this is going to turn into a hot wire this white neutral wire from our 14 3 with ground going to our other switch that same wire is now going to turn into a hot wire so now we're going to have to label that with a black marking here you can just use black electrical tape but shout out to chris from our last my past videos he's been commenting he used shrink wrap so if you have a shrink a shrink shrink tape or whatever you remember where you heat it up and it shrinks you can use that it works well it doesn't fall out so that's a great idea from chris so thank you chris for suggesting that but unfortunately i don't have any with me at the moment so i'm just gonna use uh black tape okay so you have options what you're going to do now is you're going to take the red wire from going from the light fixture and then you're going to take that new hot wire that you just labeled and we're going to connect those and that's connected now boom which leaves us that this white wire coming from the light fixture is gonna be uh a loner wire nothing's going to connect to this it's just going to float we're going to shove it in the j box and it's just going to remain by itself a lonely wire this is second recap um you already i already recapped that section right here we're gonna recap this section right here with the first j box okay so what we just did is we fed a new 14 3 3 wire with ground from j box to j box we introduced the first three-way switch what we did is we ins uh we hooked the red wire from our newly installed 143 with ground coming from our other j box and we installed it into travel terminal number one which is on the left side of the switch we took the black wire from the 14 three with ground coming from the other j box to the right side which is the travel terminal number two so now we took our black wire coming from the light fixture and we installed it into the com terminal common terminal and then we took our ground wires to every single one of these we took the ground wire from this switch we took the ground wire from the 14 3 going to the other j box and we took the ground wire from our light fixture and we installed it all together into one connector we took our red wire coming from our light fixture and we took our white neutral wire coming from our 14 3 coming from the other j box and we marked it with black tape because now that is a hot wire we connected those two and then the neutral wire coming from the light fixture it is not connected to anything and it is a loner so let me zoom in to this so that you can see where exactly everything is connected feel free to pause it and if you can't see where that bottom wire is coming through it's coming from down here but you can kind of see where it's all feeding from the top this is coming from the light fixture at the top and you can pause it for your um for your reference okay so hopefully that makes sense now let's move down the line to the last j box okay open this up take off 5 8. all three wires have been stripped so the very first thing that we're going to do since we marked the other wire co go into their first j box with the black tape that was that one was hot this has to be marked now with black tape or you can use shrink wrap electrical shrink wrap to mark that just so that the next person working on this knows that that is a hot wire all this all three wires are gonna get looped so take your while loop see how fast this tool makes these loops i really like this super fast highly recommend this tool now we are going to introduce our second three-way light switch we are just gonna mirror the traveler the same way we wired the traveler terminal one and two we're gonna wire it the same way just like this start off with the oddball which is pretty much this neutral wire that was marked with the black tape this is now hot we are going to run this now to our com terminal common terminal let's mark it right there let's wrap it around there clockwise tighten that down the red is on the left connect that black is on the right tighten that down and last but not least we're going to take our ground wire and connect that with the two terminal wire connector that's it so once again we have our black on the right red on the left ground together from our pigtail to our 14 3 wire and then we have our oddball white neutral marked with tape because that's now our hot and that completes the circuit so this pretty much is everything i'm not going to put everything on the j box just yet because we are going to do one final recap i know you're going to get mad at me but oh well i want to make everything nice and clear for every everybody that's actually the first time doing this i want you to get this because i myself am a visual learner and it takes many many times for me to get it in my head so i'm just explaining it the way i want to be taught if someone was teaching me okay so just be patient if you find this uh too much then just fast forward or maybe this video is not for you maybe youtube shorts maybe i don't know but oh well let's go power source 14 2 2 wire with ground going to our light fixture j box okay let's start with the neutrals first or the ground let's start with the grounds first the ground wire from our light fixture going in ground wire from our um power source going in ground wire from our 14 three three wire cable going in okay so those are three ground wires all connected together so now let's go with our neutral since they're all looking together the easiest one to talk about neutral wire from our light fixture going in neutral wire from our 14 3 wire going in that's actually the wire going to our first switch neutral wire from our power source going in all together boom that's done now we got our hot wire from our light fixture connected to the 14 3 hot wire that's connected boom now the red wire from our 14 3 wire is connected to the black wire power source okay so that's connected again red wire from our 14 3 black wire from our power source connected together boom we're complete with that j box now let's run to our 14 3 wire now going to our first j box okay let's start off with the ground wire since that's the easiest all right so the so the ground wire from our pigtail from our switch connected ground wire from our 14 3 connected ground wire from our new 14 3 to this light j box going in connected all ground is connected okay now we're gonna go with the light fixture or now we're going with the three-way switch connection the red wire from our newly 14-3 inserted on the bottom right here which is connected to that j box the red from that is connected on the left number one traveler terminal the black wire from the same wire fourteen three going from that j box connected on the right side second terminal travel traveler terminal now we're gonna go with the elephant in the room which is the weird the odd man out we are taking that white wire from this 14 3 we're marking it with black tape wrap it around now this is designated as hot we are taking the red wire from our 14 3 coming from our light fixture and we're connecting those two together okay and now we're taking that white neutral wire from our 14 3 coming from the light fixture and that's not going to be connected to anything that is a odd man out still we're going to put a cap on that put that in good now let's go follow the 14 3 going to j box number two the easiest one which ends the circuit okay we're gonna mirror everything that we did on this switch right here first things that's obvious red on the left black on the right red on the left black on the right odd switch from this one okay the odd neutral is connected on the comms terminal okay so that's which is the black one wrap that around take the pigtail ground take the ground from this wire connect it and that completes it and that my friends is how you do it let's go hook up the power and let's see if it works please i hope it works just kidding it will work i'm going to take our volt claw use that and orientate the wire so we don't have to use our precious hands now for the moment of truth for the three-way switch with the fixture on the start of the run meaning the power is feeding to the fixture okay let's turn it on boom let's see if we can control it on here off on just like that so that is this method number two okay so if you have any questions on this method leave it in the comment section down below i'd be glad to answer that for you but simple as that so friends now that we finished our method number two which is the light fixture is at the start of the run meaning that the power source is going to the light fixture first to the switches we are now going to go to method number three which is the light fixture is now in the middle between these two switches so with that being said let's get to method number three so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to take my power source which is that 14 2 wire going to that light fixture and move it over now to our light first light switch because that's where the power is going to start off i'm going to move that light fixture in the middle and it's going to be sandwiched between these two it's right in the middle of these two switches so now let's take our 14 2 wire cable now this 14 2 is coming from a 15 amp power source or your 15 amp breaker right to our first j box let's mark this our power source the only wires that we're going to be looping on this one is the hot wire from our power source so again take your needle nose pliers or this amazing tool right here and we're going to loop it okay now we already have our pigtail again always install your pigtails first so that'll it'll be easier for you good tip and trick pigtail it onto the ground wire now take this looped hot wire and we're gonna loop it or we're gonna hook it up on our calm terminal put it on a clockwise position tightening it down now we're all we're gonna we already know we're gonna insert another wire through here so we're gonna use our three-way wire connector wiggle wire connector and we're gonna feed that into our ground for our switch ground from our power source and we're gonna leave this open for the other wire coming through for that ground we're going to insert another wire through this j box so the next wire that we're going to be feeding onto this first j box with our first three-way switch is this 14 3 with ground wire okay i'm going to feed it right through the stud and i'm going to feed it right inside this j box segregation is always good for these wires so you don't get confused again these the right side wires are going to the light fixture the left side is the power side now that we have all the ground connected like what i said we left the slot open for the ground we're going to take now our ground from our 14 3 new wire that just came in the box and we're going to insert it onto that ground terminal right here for our wire connector the only wires that we're going to loop onto this 14 3 that we just entered is going to be the black and the red wire once again i like to be consistent i like to put the red wire on the left traveler terminal first terminal right here we call this the travel terminal on the left side and we're going to put the black one on the right traveler terminal on the top so let's do this first tighten that down and then we're going to take our black hot wire from our that's coming from our light fixture now and put it on the right side of terminal number two for traveler all we have left are these two neutral wires for the true for the two neutral wires all you're going to do is connect them with a wire connector just like that and that should complete this j box let me put a indication right there so we don't get confused let's do a recap let's go with the power source on the left side that's our 14 2 2 wire with ground it's going to be feeding right inside of this first j box the ground wire from that power source is going to be connected with the ground wire of the first three-way switch and the ground wire from the 14 3 3 wire with ground that is going and that is coming from the light fixture so pretty much all the ground wires put them together just like that to make it easy okay now we inserted that 14 3 3 wire with ground on the right side that is coming from the light fixture take that black wire the hot wire from that and the red wire from that the black wire is going to be connected on the right side and the red is going to be connected on the left side those are going to be connected on your two traveler terminals now which leaves us to the two neutrals so these two neutrals are coming from one which is from the 14 to two wire width ground from the power source and then the second neutral is coming from our 14 3 3 wire with ground coming from the light fixture all you got to do is connect those two usually i go down the same path and follow this circuit going to the light fixture which in this case i'm not going to do that we are going to skip the light fixture we're going to go to the next j box the second j box which is the second switch i'm gonna do the light fixture last because i want everything to pyramid up and lead up to the light fixture last so we don't get confused all right so now let's go to the second j box which is right here we're going to be using a 14 3 3 wire width ground through the stud now this is going to be going up to the light fixture let's do another label right here 1433 wire let's put another label right there so we don't get confused now we're introducing our second three wire switch again we pigtailed the ground now from this 14 3 wire that's going to the like fixture or coming from the light fixture all of the wires are going to get looped okay while excluding the ground wire take our red okay and put it on the first travel terminal instead of taking this black wire and putting onto this second travel terminal okay we're not gonna do that we are gonna put this one this black hot wire onto our com or common terminal okay so remember don't put it on the second traveler like we did on the first one we're gonna put it on the black common terminal which is the bottom tighten that down now this is the tricky one this is going to be the odd ball in the room our neutral wire our only neutral wire in this jbox it's going to be recoated for hot so take your shrink wrap electrical or electric black electrical tape or if you have the shrimp shrimp not shrimp if you have that shrink wrap electrical sleeve you can use that as well but we are going to be recording this neutral as a hot okay so we're taking that now and we're going to install this onto our second traveler terminal okay which is gonna be on the right side tighten that down and we're gonna take our easy peasy ground wires this one is our pigtail ground wire from the switch and this one's going to be our pit our ground wire from the 14 3 coming from the light fixture and we're just going to attach that with our wiggle wire connector okay so that easy all right so let me do a quick quick recap red wire goes on the left first travel terminal black wire goes to the common terminal the black screw neutral wire turns into a hot wire so we recode that for hot put black or or a black electrical tape or black shrimp uh shrink wrap keep saying shrimp maybe i'm getting hungry doing this but anyways and then take all your ground wire and connect it together with the wiggle wire connector so hopefully you got that now let's move up the line to our last part of this video which is the light fixture so now we're going to feed this wires through here through these j boxes okay we're gonna move that to the left side just so that we can segregate the wires we don't get confused now this one is coming from our second j box okay so let's do a mirror red at the top black right here neutral ground okay just like that we just want to mimic everything right there and then obviously we have our light fixture connector right here so the light fixture wires i'm just going to tuck away for now we got a 14 3 14 3 both feeding into the light fixture j box switch one switch two and there's our light at the top so i'm all about easy all right so we're gonna do the easy ones first obviously the easiest ones that we can connect are the ground wires so take your ground wire from your first switch second width second switch and the ground wire from your light fixture and we can put that at the top okay because that is the first one that we did we are left now with our neutrals hot and the reds since the red wire is up next we'll combine those two so take a two wire wiggle wire connector connect those reds together and now that's out of the picture all we have left is three hot and two neutrals one from the first switch one from the second switch and one from the light fixture so let's get rid of the light fixture black wire first black hot wire from the light fixture will only connect to the 14 3 3 wire with ground that is coming from the second three-way light switch which is gonna be on the right side as you can see it's the only one on the right side we're gonna connect those together there you go so that's gone now the light fixture neutral will only connect to the neutral wire coming from the first light switch connect that so now we're done with our light fixture cable so we don't have to worry about of that anymore that's gone which leaves us to only two wires left the neutral wire from our second light switch and the hot wire from our first light switch since we recoded this white wire from this switch see that since we re re-recoded this black that neutral is now hot we are going to recode and match it up to the right side which is this one we're just going to apply a black indicator there saying that this is now hot we are now going to connect it with the hot wire from our first light switch wire wiggle connector wire connector so now take your two terminal wiggle wire connector and combine that see that black let me zoom in see that you have a black and now you have the recoated neutral hot so let's do a recap i want to start off with our 1433 wire with ground coming from our first light switch so we don't get confused we're always going to start with our ground wire the ground wire from our 1433 wire with ground switch coming from our first switch is going to be all connected to the ground wire every ground wire that you see on here just to summarize it let's connect it all together and that's that so we can get that out of the way now the red from that first um switch the red wire from there is going to connect from the red wire on the second switch that's what you see there okay so now we get we got those two out of the way now we're to take our neutral wire from our first switch and we're going to connect that to the light fixture neutral wire okay now we're going to take our hot wire from our first switch and then we're going to connect that to the neutral wire which we recoded it to a hot wire so that's why we put that tape there now that's out of the way which leaves us to the hot wire from our light fixture and our hot wire from our second light switch three-way light switch and those two you connect okay now we have the power hooked up let's test out the switches okay so you can see they work you're in the top near the bottom of the stairs you want to turn it on you get on top of the stairs turn it off go and i'm going down the stairs get down at the stairs once again friends if you bend it to the end of this video i highly highly thank you so much if you found this video helpful and you found it a big help please hit that big thumbs up press the subscribe and notification bell and if you have any questions on this leave it in the comment section down below and let me know what video you want me to show you next regarding electrical or any type of video they want me to do so that i can make it for you and help you out in any way so thank you so much i'll see you on the next episode [Music]

Channel: Fix This House

Views: 1,470,858

Keywords: How To Wire A 3-Way Switch System Explained, 3 way switch, 3-way switch, electrical outlet, electrical switch, junction box, j-box, electrical box, Electrical DIY, Electrical Switch, single pole switch, electrical how to, outlet wiring, electrical receptacle, pig tail wiring, home DIY, DIY electrical, home electrical basics, electrical install 101, electrical for beginners, electrical plug, voltage detector, 120v outlet, hot wires, grounding wires, neutral wires

Id: CNeKRgNI7Es

Length: 61min 22sec (3682 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 09 2022