I'm trying to replace my living room ceiling light fixture. The new fixture only has black and white wires (no ground). The ceiling has red, black, white, and ground wires. When I took the old fixture down I noticed that the black wire was connected to the red wire from the ceiling and the black ceiling wire was capped off so I did the same to the new fixture but the light will not turn on. Help!!
PS. I've also tried connecting black to black and no luck either. I connected white to white and left the ground wire alone since my new light does not have a ground wire.
Best Answer
Generally speaking, you must connect ceiling live cable (CL) to fixture live (FL) and ceiling neutral (CN) to fixture neutral (FN). As comments state, your fixture may not have a ground cable (strictly speaking), but some kind of screw, most probably with proper designation indented on it or with a proper sticker. If that's so, your ground cable from ceiling (CG) will match fixture attachment for ground (FG).
That said we have:
CL > FL
CN > FN
CG > FG
Note 1.: There is a possibility that your fixture may not have proper attachment or cable for grounding. It may happen with old fixtures or these not exactly matching codes. Not preferred to fix. If you omit the grounding step, the fixture will probably work, but it's not recommended.
Note 2.: Screws on fixtures may have designations like N (for neutral) or L (for live). That may help you with doing proper matching and fixing.