Installing a flat panel LED light fixture is a cheap and easy way to upgrade a space. LEDs are now more versatile, cheap, energy-efficient, and you can often choose their color temperature.
Editor’s Note: Anytime we talk about electricity, we need to tell you that any electrical work on your house is dangerous. What follows in this article is for educational purposes only. Reading our articles will not make you a professional electrician. If you harm yourself doing electrical work, you should seek the medical services necessary.
Tools Needed
- Voltage Tester
- Phillips Head Screwdriver
- Drill
Turn Off Power
Firstly, always turn off the power before doing any electrical work. You turn off the power at your electrical box. Turning off just the light switch isn’t sufficient to ensure your safety. Once the power is turned off, double check with a voltage tester (Paid Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/3w4y6Y2) on the live and common wires just to be sure.
Remove Old Fixture
Secondly, remove the old fixture carefully. Even if you don’t care about saving the old fixture, you don’t want broken glass or screws in your carpet. Additionally, you don’t want to damage your ceiling and have to patch holes or repaint if you can avoid it.
Install Frame
All light fixtures come with some sort of frame that attaches to the junction box. Additionally, larger fixtures, like the one in my video above, have additional screws and anchors to attach to the drywall. All ceiling light fixtures and ceiling fans should connect directly to the junction box in the ceiling.
Connect Wiring
Next, you connect the wires. Most fixtures will only have one live, a common, and a ground wire. The trick here is to connect the same colored wires to each other. Black to black, white to white, and green, yellow, or bare copper to your green, yellow, or bare copper.
If you have more than one live wire in your fixture, you’ll have a red or blue wire as well as the black wire.
Attach Flat Panel LED Light Fixture
Finally, you attach the light to the frame that you’ve already installed. Usually this snaps, twists, or screws onto the frame directly. That saves you from having the hard task of mounting a light to the ceiling that is holding on by just a few wires.
Once your light is installed, you can turn the power back on and see if it works. I recommend having someone on the phone or within shouting distance observing the light when you flip the power back on. That way, you can quickly turn the power off again if you need to. It has never come up with me, but I like to be safe.
That’s how you install a flat panel LED light fixture. Hope this information helps you as a homeowner.
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