I’ve made a few lamps and a few small electrical projects.
But have never done some thing like this so was wondering
what the best way to wire them would be. I don’t want to burn my house down when I plug it in.
I just need diagrams of the right way to wire the three lights together, and one of the "burn your house down" way, so I know how not to wire it. 🙂
Best Answer
Looks like you have already purchased mains-voltage lamps and are intending to wire those, presumably with a switch somewhere. You can do that, but IMHO it's easier to use low-voltage lights and you'll get nicer results too.
Use your favorite web search engine and search for "led puck lights". There are too many different options to list here, and that will be your biggest challenge. But once you find the one you want, you can just plug the LED driver/transformer into a wall socket, run the low-voltage wires to the lights, no fuss, no worries about burning anything down or electrocuting yourself.
This is similar to the other answer, except that I'll suggest you stick with 12V, or possibly 24V, equipment if you can. USB-powered devices use 5V, and will generally have lower wattage, and generally won't be dimmable (if that's something you care about…people often do in the bedroom setting). With the 12V options, they will either come with a dimmable power supply, or it will be trivial to rewire them with a replacement power supply that is dimmable (worst-case, you'll have to cut some wires and splice with wire nuts…the wires will all be small and carry only low-voltage current, so easy and relatively safe).
Other than picking an actual set of lights, the other "hard part" will be orienting the lights. The puck lights are designed to be downlights. You might want to build a short shelf in which you can mount all of the lamps, or alternatively you could build a little housing for each so that they can be directed downward while attached to the vertical surface of the headboard.
I used LED puck lights, mounted in a "box valence" (there's probably a better term for this…it's just a shallow hollow space that runs under the overhead cabinet, connecting the left and right sides of the Murphy bed frame) over the head of a Murphy bed in my guest room, and they turned out great. Just the right amount of light, they were easy to install, and the only part of the project that involved mains-voltage parts, was literally just "plug and play". I didn't have to do anything tricky or risky with mains-voltage at all.