Video: Replacing a Light Switch

So if you're looking to replace a standard switch in your home or your business, um, I would recommend if you're planning on doing it by yourself, uh, you always want to turn off the breaker first before you take the switch out of the box. Uh, once you have that open, uh, you can then turn the breaker back on in order to test which side is the line side and which side is the load side.

Uh, the line side is the power coming in, where the power is actually coming from. The load side would be the, um, cable going directly to the light or group of lights. Uh, once you have identified them, you would want to label them, uh, and then go and turn the breaker back off. Once you have the breaker off again, you can then proceed to, um, take out the old switch and put in the new switch.

The new switch, you would just put the line side into one terminal and [00:01:00] the load side into the other. Uh, once you do that, you can put the switch back into the wall, and then turn the breaker back on and test it. Yeah, so there's a lot of different switches that you could have. Uh, you could have a single-pole standard switch, you could have a dimmer switch, uh, and then we can get into three-way or even four-way switching.

Uh, three-way switching is when there's two locations, uh, for one group of lights or one light. Uh, four-way switching is three or more, uh, locations for switching. Uh, with dimming, you would want to do the same exact procedure. Uh, normally with dimmer switches, um, it's gonna come with, uh, an instruction manual, and all the wires are gonna come out of the actual switch.

In that case, um, you would just follow the instructions and, um, wire nut each wire directly with, uh, what it's labeled for. So normally the black wire goes with the power, uh, the red wire would go with the, uh, switch leg or the load, uh, side, which is going to the light or group of lights.