How to Hang a Ceiling Light Fixture

Nothing spoils a dinner party like a chandelier in the pasta or a sudden blackout. Here's how to hang lights safely and securely.

Sentence

A fraught day

Complexity

Initiate

Cost

To a lesser degree $20

Introduction

Change a drab board into a dazzling nonpareil with a new overhead powdery fixture. Here's how to mount that new fixture aright and safely using professional installation techniques. Even if you've never tackled an electric design before, you can install a cap repair by following the DIY advice and photos in this story.

Tools Required

Materials Compulsory

  • 10-32 establish screw
  • Electrical package
  • Physical phenomenon tape
  • Light texture
  • Conducting wire insane

How to Hang a Ceiling Bright Fixture Project Overview

Installment a new light fixture is a great way to instantly change a drab room into a dazzling one. Lighting showrooms and catalogs have a wide variety of fixtures to allure you. And fifty-fifty though the udder of parts included with some fixtures may look daunting, the electrical connections are simple enough for even a beginner.

But poor instalmen techniques hind end outcome in a potentially lethal shock or fire. Therein article, we'll help you pick out a fixture that will mount safely along your electric box so show you the best techniques for testing a dry land and conjunctive the wires. We've even included photos of the two most common mounting systems to help you make sense of entirely those little parts.

The temperature rating of your existing wires will affect which eccentric of fixture you can install. Before you go shopping, read "Remove the old fixture and inspect the wiring," below.

Contrive step-by-step (9)

Step 1

Remove the Old Fixture and Scrutinize the Wiring

Remove the Fixture

Remove

Turn off the power to the palish habitue at the main circle panel. Bump off the nut or screws securing the rounded canopy and lower it. Then remove the screws securing the crossbar to the electrical box and lower the fixture.

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Footstep 2

Make Sure the Power is Polish off

power

Test the wires to make a point the power is off. Move the tilt of a non-contact voltage detector near from each one conducting wire to make sure the power to wholly wires in the box is turned off (make sure the light switch is turned on). If the tester lights, switching off circuit breakers or loosen fuses one at a time until the tester light goes off. Disconnect the wires from the light fixity. Leave other wires connected and tucked into the electrical box.

IT's hard to believe, but many of the scant fixtures now sold-out at home centers and lighting showrooms can't be safely installed in virtually houses bugged before 1985. These fixtures are clearly labeled with a warning that reads "For supply connections, use wire rated for at to the lowest degree 90 degrees C." The intellect is simple: Fixtures with this label generate enough ignite to damage the insulation on senior wires and cause a fire adventure. Wires manufactured after 1985 are required to have coverings that can stand firm the higher temperature.

If you know your wiring was installed ahead 1985, get into't use fixtures requiring 90-academic degree–rated supply wires. To reassert that you receive 90-degree–rated supply wire, take the cable jacket or cable insulation. If you have fictile cased cable (much referred to equally Romex), look for the letters NM-B or UF-B printed on the plastic sheath. If your wiring is fed through conduit, looking at on the wire insulation for the letters THHN or THWN-2. If you're still unsure, either call an electrician operating room choose a fixture that isn't labelled with a supply wire temperature requirement.

Check the Electric Box for Capacity and Strength

Heavy Fixtures Require Strong Boxes

If you choose a enceinte light fixture (the one we bought weighed in at a hefty 25 lbs.), check your electrical box to make a point it will support the weight. The National Electrical Code (NEC) allows you to hang upward to 50 lbs. from any electrical box that is threaded to accept No. 8-32 machine screws for attaching the crossbar (see "Mounting with Screws and Cap Nuts" and "Mounting with a Rib Pipe" in Additional Information below). This includes all but every type of cap corner.

For practical purposes, make sure your electrical box is securely pegged-down to solid framing before you hang a new light habitue from it. If your light fixture weighs much than 50 lbs., it has to embody supported independent of the electrical box. An easy solution is to install a fan brace box (available from home centers and computer hardware stores) that's designed to constitute installed without cutting any additional holes in your cap. Check the label to make sure the box is designed to tolerate more than 35 lbs.

Most ceiling boxes are large enough: The Necrotizing enterocolitis dictates how umteen wires and clamps you bum safely put in an physical phenomenon box. Typical 1-1/2 to 2-in. big octagonal or round ceiling boxes are quite broad and overcrowding is rarely a problem. Even so, you should deplete the calculations to be sure. See the section on "Calculating Box Sizes." But if you find a round box that's only 1/2 in. deep, supervene upon it. Once again, the easiest way of life to install a new electrical package in an existing ceiling is to practice a uncommon winnow stabilize and box made for retrofitting.

Calculating Box Sizes

To figure the minimum box size up obligatory by the National Electrical Encrypt, contribute: 1 for each hot and neutral wire entering the corner, 1 for all the ground wires rolled into one, 1 for all the clamps combined, and 2 for each device (switch or receptacle, but usually not light fixtures) installed in the box. Multiply this figure by 2 for 14-gauge wire and 2.25 for 12-gauge telegraph to get the stripped box volume in cubical inches. Plastic boxes have the volume stamped inside.

Abuse 3

Essa for a Ground Electrify

Turn the Magnate on and Quiz for Eager

wire

Turn over the power to the light back on at the main circuit panel (the visible light switch is still happening). Exercise the not-contact examiner once more to pretend sure there is power to the colored (hot) wire.

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Step 4

Test for Ground

Test

Touch the leads of a neon voltage quizzer between the fervent wire and the golden box (operating theater betwixt the hot wire and meagre pig ground wire if you suffer one). If the tester lights, the metal box surgery bare Cu electrify is grounded and you can proceed. If the tester doesn't light, indicating there is no primer coat, call a licensed electrician to supply one. (It's often difficult.) Turn off the power at the main electrical circuit panel before continuing.

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Step 5

Contribute a Ground Telegram to a Metal Box

metal

Impound a ground telegram to the gold corner if it's non already present (turn power off first). Wrap the end of a 6-in. length of unornamented copper telegram around a None. 10-32 ground prison guard and drive IT into the threaded hole in the bottom of the box. Enclose the cable at least three-quarters of the way just about the screw in a clockwise direction. Tighten the screw to secure the ground wire.

Because most light fixtures are metal or have exposed metal parts, they need to have an equipment ground to embody safe. First you have to shuffle sure a grounding means is available (Photos 3 and 4).

If your house is wired with plastic-sheathed cable with a bare copper ground wire, you're believably covered, but test it to cost sure, using the same procedure we'Ra using to psychometric test the metal box. Once you've determined that a ground exists, it's only a matter of making sure that totally the metal parts—electrical corner, fixture-mounting strap and light habitue—are firmly wired to the ground (Photos 5 and 8). If your crossbar doesn't throw a threaded hole for a ground screw, connect a ground wire to it with a special grounding clip.

Make a point You Fix the Polarity Right

The two lamp electric cord wires connected many an hanging light fixtures are hard to tell apart. Yet, it's critical to correctly identify the amoral wire and associate it to the objective electrify(s) in the package. Connecting it to the hot testament arouse the threaded bulb socket and produce a electric potential shock jeopardy. See Photo 8 for clues to identifying the nonsubjective fixture wire.

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Stone's throw 6

Thin Overhead Work by Preassembling Parts on the Ground

Preassemble the Climb Welt Assembly

tightening

Align the vertebral column of the canopy (the side that fits against the ceiling) with the crossbar and adjust the length of the pipe until about 3/8 in. of the duds on the screw collar loop extend through the canopy. Lock the threaded pipe in this position by tightening the locknut against the crossbar.

You'll save up time and aching arms away assembling and adjusting the climb hardware before you climb the ladder. Government note: The Additional Info at the end of this article below demo the two most common mounting systems. In either case, the trick is to thread the machine screws or threaded rod into the crossbar first. Then slue the canopy ended the screws or rod.

Align the crossbar with the back of the canopy and adjust the duration of the screws or rod to pop out about 1/4 to 3/8 in. through the canopy. Tighten the safety nut(s) to hold the screws or rod in this position. For hanging fixtures, adjust the length of the chain by removing lengths, but don't cut the wires shorter until you've decorated the fixing and addicted that it's the right height.

Mounting Systems

Whether your luminance fixture is held to the box seat with screws or a threaded pipe, the two mounting systems shown here, the key to an easy installation is assembling and adjusting the parts ahead you crawl up on the ladder. To do this, firstly thread the screws or pipe through the crossbar.

Then, while the habitue is still along the ground, line up the crossbar with the top of the canopy and adjust the screws or tabor pipe in or away until about 1/4 to 1/2 in. is protruding finished the canopy. Hop on the crossbar to the electrical box, then connect the wires and finally the fixture (see "Mounting with Screws and Cap Nuts" and "Mounting with a Threaded Pipe" in Additional Entropy below).

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Tread 7

Reconnect the Comparable Wires

Screw the Crossbar to the Box

Screw

Position all the wires to one side of the crossbar. And so screw the crossbar to the electrical box with the screws. You'll need a helper to support the fixture while you do this.

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Step 8

Connect the Wires

Connect

Connect the neutral wire from the light fixedness to the neutral empty electrify(s) in the box. If your fastness is wired with lamp-style cord rather than white (neutral) and grim (hot) wires, identify the neutral telegraph by looking for silver-tongued conductors, authorship, squared corners, or ribs or indentations on the insulation.

The unmarked wire is the hot wire. Connect it to the violet-purple (usually black or red) white wire in the box. Complete the hook-up by iteration the ground wire dextrorotary around the ground screw happening the crossbar, tightening the have it away, and connecting the remainder of the wire to the undercoat wire from the light fixture.

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Step 9

Close the Box

Secure

Fold the conductors into the ceiling box and slide the canopy over the protruding threaded support. Secure it with the decorative nut to complete the installation.

After examination to pee sure no of the wires in the box seat are hot (Photo 2), disconnect the hot, neutral and ground (if your grey fixity has one) from your old fixture and leave some other wires bundled in the loge. Reconnect the new fixture to these same wires (Photo 8).

If the old wires let twisted surgery damaged ends, shorten them off and remove 1/2 in. of the insulated covering with a wire-stripping tool. Tie in the wires from the new fixture with appropriately sized cable connectors. Read the packaging to determine the correct sized. When you connect stranded mending wire to solid telegram, extend the stranded end about 1/8 in. beyond the solid wire before you turn on the telegraph connector. Stranded cable occasionally clogs the threads in a connector, preventing a tight grip. Discard the connector and use a new one and only if IT spins freely without tightening.

Complete the installation by installing the canopy (Photo 9). If it doesn't fit choky to the ceiling, reset the screws surgery threaded rod. Add light bulbs, switch happening the power, and charge up the switch to check out your work.

CAUTION!

If you take aluminum wiring, don't mess with it! Call in a licensed in favor of WHO's certified to bring on with it. This wiring is flat gray, not the dull orange tree that's characteristic of copper color.

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Additional Information

  • Mounting with screws and capital around the bend
  • Mounting with a threaded pipe