Replacing an old ugly ceiling fan/light combo with LED light. Two issues.
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Three wires come out of the ceiling – Red, Black, & White. LED light has only Black and white. Tried capping red white connecting black to black and white to white but the light did not come on. I tested this with the current light switch, not the one I want to replace it with – see below.
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I also purchase an LED dimmer switch. Looks like the original fan/light had one switch for light and one for the fan. That was replaced sometime as the fan switch does not work but is still wired to the light switch. The fan I just took down had a pull chain to turn on the variable speed fan.
I'm now in over my head. What do I need to do?
Best Answer
The black/red/white at the ceiling junction box are travelers.
Most-common wiring will have the following:
You're going to find power at the existing switches, one switch should have two black and one switch should have one black and one red. One of these switches will be downstream from the other.
Figure out which is downstream and delete it (switch, wiring, and the box if it's a separate box demo the box or use a blank plate or if it's the same box go buy a blank insert if you have decorator switches). Most common wiring practice will have a cable entering one of the switch boxes, three-way nutted to another cable leaving the box and a pigtail to the switch in that box; if you have that, you'll pull them apart and test them all to see which is carrying the power.