How to Replace a Light Switch

Learn how to replace a light switch. Important! You must turn off the power feeding the switch before beginning.

Hi! I’m David Lupberger with servicemagic.com. We’re going to talk about how to replace a single-pole switch because over time, these things break so we want to put a new one in. The first step, always make sure you go down to your electrical panel and you turn off the appropriate circuit. Be very careful that you’re not working on these switches when the power is still on. It can be dangerous. After making sure the electricity to this switch has been turned of, you remove the faceplate. There’s a second set of screws that hold the actual switch to the electrical box, remove those next. First thing I’m going to do is loosen the ground wire. I know it’s a ground wire because it’s an unshaved copper wire and it connects to—you can see a green screw. I’ll take that off first. Next, there’s two way to attach the wire to the actual switch. These are actually plug-in attachments or you can actually screw it in. It’s quicker to do it this way. So, I’m going to cut the old wires and get it ready for the new switch. I’m going to take a handy little stripper tool, expose that wire, we’ll do it on both. And you’ll see, I now have the wires I can plug in to the back of the new switch. So, you’ll see the back of the switch, you’ll see the screws, you can actually attach the wire to the screw. But I’m going to go ahead and use these two holes where I can push it in and it’s a little bit quicker assembly when I do that. Now, we’re going to attach the ground wire and a simple little tip here, as the screw is going in counter clockwise, make sure the wire wraps around the screw in a counter clockwise fashion because as the screw tightens, the wire is wrapped tighter around the screw itself. Now, we reverse the process and on the switch you’ve got these screws to put this switch back into the box. So, I’m going to go ahead and screw the new switch into the existing electrical box. So, I’ll tighten this cover back on. Next thing I’ll do is go downstairs, turn the power back on, come back, check the light to make sure it works. And that’s how you replace a single-pole switch.