We just bought a house built in '74 and all the lights were on dimmers except for one in the hall by the bedrooms. I wanted to to put a dimmer in so my daughter can use it as a faux night light if she needs to get up in the middle of the night.
I opened the box up and it was crammed with wires and texture/paint:
I bought this guy:
And after some research I made the following connections:
- Top Wire on old switch to new black wire.
- Bottom Wire to red wire.
- Unfurled the curved "ground?" wire in the back after confirming it was grounded and connected green to it
- Capped off orange w/ white stripe by itself.
The light works just fine. On is on, off is off, the dimmer works. There's a split second delay when turning it on though, while its twin (same fixture, bulbs, and switch [though it's much older]) further down the hall turns on instantly. It's not really noticeable unless you look for it, but it's probably 1/10 of a second or so slower.
I've got the breaker off for now (we still haven't quite moved fully) – but I'm having second thoughts on my color coordination and such.
Best Answer
That's exactly right.
A lot of these new dimmers are coming through as both single-pole and 3-way. This does add to confusion for some DIYers.
Again, this new crop of LED/CFL compatible dimmers could have a very slight delay in coming on.
Capping off the red/white stripe wire basically turns this into a SP dimmer.