How to Change a Light Fixture

Hey everyone!  I’m going to hand this over to my handsome husband for this one.  I do assist in each light fixture swap out but he does most the work so I wanted it to be 100% correct for all my lovely readers!  It seems like it’s a daunting task but it really isn’t that hard!  Once you’ve done it once it gets easier each time! We should be pros since we’ve switched out almost every fixture in our home. Below is our step by step tutorial with pictures. As with all electrical work, make sure the source of the power to that particular light is dead. Make sure to turn off the fuse so you are not working with hot or live wires.

Here goes:

Step 1

Loosen the mounting of the light that is placed against the ceiling. Disconnect the wires. The electrical box containing the wires coming from the house typically consists of a live, neutral and ground wires. These are typically connected to the wires from the light itself with electrical nuts. Unscrew the electrical nuts to disconnect the existing light fixture.  You will untwist the connected wires after removing the electrical nuts.

Step 2

Disconnect the existing light from the mounting bracket and remove from ceiling altogether. You will now have 3 wires sticking out of the ceiling (live, neutral, ground).

Step 3

Attach the mounting bracket that came with the new light to the light box in the ceiling and insert the mounting screw into mounting bracket – this will most likely hold the bulk of the light fixture’s weight. Make sure to tighten the nut on top of the mounting screw so that it will not slip back through the center hole in the mounting bracket.

Step 4

Cut the wires to the light (in this case the wires make up the cord and the ground wire that run through the chain) to the desired length. Make absolutely certain you are cutting to the desired length, or you will have to re-wire the entire light if the cord or wires are cut too short (Not preferable).

Step 5

Run the new light wires up through the mounting screw, and attach the wires with the electrical nuts. Keep in mind that many times the ground has a wire that mounts right to the bracket with a little green screw. Simply attach this as you would the other wires. If the wires are color coated, make sure the colors match (red with red, black with black, white with white, etc). In this case, they were not color coated on the new light fixture itself so I just attached one side of the cord to the live wire and one side to neutral power sources and then screwed on the electrical nuts. Then I connected the ground – note the little green screw on the mounting bracket. IMPORTANT: During this step, make sure you have positioned the cover plate or ceiling plate down on the cord so that when you hang the light, you can slide the cover plate up for final mounting. Otherwise, you will have to disconnect the wires and put the cover plate back on.

Step 6

Attach light fixture to mounting screw in mounting bracket that you attached to the electrical box in the ceiling. Tighten everything up (including the central hook) and slide the cover plate up over the mounting. Now you are ready to hang the light. 

Step 7

Open the desired chain link with a set of pliers at the desired length and eliminate excess rings. Hang light at desired length (recall your cord length will only let the light hang down so far, so your chain will have to be as long as your cord, at a minimum).

Step 8

Turn fuse box back on for that room and turn it on and enjoy!

Thanks, babe for taking the reigns on this one!  I hope you found our instructions clear and don’t hesitate to ask any questions!  Isn’t the light amazing?!  How cool does it look at night?!  I want to thank Parrot Uncle for providing me with this gorgeous light.  Now it’s time to paint this kitchen and get new appliances!  The appliances arrived on Friday! I’m soooo excited and they already make our kitchen look so much better!  You know you are grown up when getting new appliances feels like Christmas morning!

This post is sponsored by Parrot Uncle and contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting the brands that support Refashionably Late!  See my full disclosure here.