Electrical – Australia: Which wire is hot / active and which is neutral

electricallightingwiring

Here's a photo of wires coming out of my ceiling (grey, yellow/green and black) and the wires going into a ceiling lamp (brown and blue).

So in Australia the general colouring codes go like this:

Brown: Active / hot
Blue: Neutral
Green/Yellow: Earth (ground)

I didn't do the wiring in the picture, it was there when I bought the house, but when putting up new lights I want to make sure it's done right.

Obviously this is a sloppy job with the ground wire missing!

My question is: The grey and black coming out of the ceiling, which is active/hot and which is neutral?

For obvious reasons I don't want to invert the phase by switching around hot and neutral.

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Best Answer

In Australia and New Zealand, the general rule is that

  • any wire with green on it has to be earth,
  • any wire with blue or black on it has to be neutral,
  • any wire that does NOT have blue, black or green on it has to be phase (hot).

So in this case, the pale grey wire from the ceiling is the phase wire, and it's correct to connect it to the brown wire in the lamp, as shown in your photo.

Also, if the lamp doesn't have any metal parts within normal reach, then it typically won't have an earth connection. In that case, there's nothing to connect the green/yellow wire from the ceiling to, and it's perfectly correct to leave it unconnected.

I believe the wiring in your photo is correct, and up to code for Australia. It's not a sloppy job at all - it looks quite professional to me.

Having said that, I am neither a lawyer, nor an electrician, nor an Australian; so please do not consider this to be normative advice about the Australian electrical code.

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