Installing a Ceiling Light, the Dummy Method

Match these wires to your fixture, Doc!

There are some DIY tasks anyone can accomplish. At least that's apparently the business model of the people who started Demand Media Studios (now known as Leaf Group). Why else would they let out-of-work journalism and English literature graduates hold forth on everything from rebuilding a flathead V8 to converting a garage? It made no difference whether the "contributor" understood the topic, as long as he or she could reword instructions from somewhere else on the internet. Of course, letting complete amateurs give instructions to wannabe DIYers can be problematic, just as it was the day Dr. Eugenia Orr decided to write "How to Install Ceiling Lighting Fixtures" for eHow.com.

The good doctor (her doctorate is a PhD in "education in ethical leadership," whatever that means) at least had the honesty to tell her readers that

"If your room does not have a fixture currently [sic], it is best to have an electrician run new wiring for you to the ceiling."

Thanks for that, Eugenia, though we'd probably also ask said electrician to install the necessary ceiling box. Of course, if your room does have a fixture already, replacing the existing fixture is reasonably easy; but if you're unfamiliar with electrical work, some of Dr. Orr's instructions just might get you in trouble...

Oh, we don't have any problems when she informs you that, after turning off the power and removing all the glass pieces-parts,  you should "Use a utility knife to loosen the fixture from paint on the ceiling so as to not cause damage." ...though it's fairly unlikely that anyone has repainted the ceiling since the light was installed -- unless you're outside, which means the light should have been caulked. But that's just a quibble... No, where Eugenia begins to get her ignorant self into trouble is the point at which she starts blathering about the wiring:

"...Unscrew the wire nuts and separate the wires of the fixture and the electrical box."

Followed a couple of steps later by

"...Attach fixture wires to the wires of the electrical box using supplied wire nuts. Match color for color.

...and there's where she displays her ignorance of her topic: "[Matching] color for color" only works on a two-way lighting circuit with the switch in the middle of the run (with modern wiring). What about a light on a three-way switch: what happens with the red wire? What about a circuit whose switch is at the end of the run, and the installer recoded the neutral wire coming from the switch with a scrap of electrical tape? Huh?

No, that's not how you do it: if there's anything "nonstandard" in that ceiling box (and that's assuming there is a ceiling box. Some more poorly-built modern houses don't even have them...), you will need to tag the incoming wires with some sort of marker that indicates what wires from the fixture they match. You won't always be able to "color match" (we notice Dr. Orr's BA is in interior design – maybe that's why she's so concerned with color...)

This is what you get when you let someone who's never actually done something write about it: partial and confusing "instructions" that could be dangerous. That's why eHow generates so many Dumbass of the Day awards and that's why Dr. Eugenia Orr gets this one.

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