Electrical – Old kitchen light fixture was wired backwards, should I reverse it with the new one

electricallight-fixturewire

After looking through some other posts here about switch loops, I don't think that's the situation I have here. When I pulled off the old light fixture for the kitchen (dual bulb), it had the white wires from the fixture connected to a single black wire, and the black wires of the fixture were connected to three white wires that were wrapped together.

Should I wire up my new led fixture the same way, or was this wrong to begin with and I should reverse it?

In the picture you can see a red cap that has a few black wires from elsewhere in the room, and a single white wire that mates up with the black one that was connected to the fixture.

picture of the old light fixture wired in.

Best Answer

The fixture was in fact wired up backwards before. After some more searching I found out that by measuring the voltage from each wire to ground I could determine which one was hot. The black wire read 115V to ground so I went with black to black and white to white and it works!