How to install a light fixture

Before you do anything – turn off the electricity, not to your entire house just where you are putting up the lights.

YOU’LL NEED:

• A light fixture, including mounting bracket and screws

• Wire stripper, or a basic utility knife

• Screwdriver or power drill

Music to work to: Reflector by Arcade Fire ... mainly because I thought it was called Connector (you will understand the relevance later in the post).

Awesome Femme we are channelling: Susan Sarandon’s character Reggie Love from The Client. Obvs.

Every light has a live and a neutral wire and some will also have an earth wire, live = brown and neutral = blue whereas the earth wire is a yellow wire with green stripe through it. That little black thing is a connector and it connects your fabulous vintage find to the not so fabulous wires hanging out of your wall.

Connect the wires from your light to the connector, you may have to cut back the wire casing to reveal the copper wire – it’s only the copper wire that goes into the connector. Make sure all the copper wire that you have cut back goes inside the connector – there should be NONE visible between the wire casing and the connector.

Now take your ‘phase tester’, yes the instrument that looks exactly like a screwdriver and with one finger on the bottom touch the wires coming out of the wall. If the ‘phase tester’ glows like a teeny lightsaber – that means the wires are live and you will get electrocuted if you touch them ... so my suggestion would be don’t. Instead turn off the electricity at your main switch board and then you can touch those wires to your heart’s content with little to no risk of instant death! BONUS.

Now the next job is to connect the wires coming out of your wall to the connector. Fix the wall wires into the connector and make sure that you fix the brown wire into same cavity as the brown wire from the light and same for the blue wires. Once that’s complete – pop your desired light bulb into the lighting fixture, pop on the electricity and all going to plan the light should come on!

Next step, take your bracket ( this is the metal thing with the holes in it – it will come with your light) and using your screw gun, screw the bracket at the desired height into the wall. Then take the base of the lighting fixture and place this on top of the bracket making sure that all wires etc. are inside the base and not visible. Screw the base into place and hey presto you have just installed your first lighting fixture! Go team you!

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