top of page
Writer's pictureDIYTechnician

DIY Old Garage Light Fixture Replacement with NEW LED Low Consumption [LED Overhead Light UPGRADE]

Updated: Feb 14, 2021


DISCLAIMER: I am not an electrician. This post is an explanation and demonstration of how I installed this LED fixture. I recommend you hire a certified electrician to perform your wiring and installation of this for you.

The old light was dim and and used a considerable amount of energy.

The first step is to turn off the power. I recommend you turn off the power at both the main breaker panel as well as the light switch.

I figured I'd unscrew this and save it for a rainy day or maybe for a lamp. I think that light bulbs are eventually going to be a thing of the past considering this bright new LED technology.

Took my cordless drill and unscrewed the securing screws. I knew this was old due to the screws being flathead. Who uses flathead screws for applications like this anymore?

Pulled off the old ceramic light fixture to expose the wiring underneath. I was happy to see that it was correctly installed in an electrical box and not just coming through the ceiling.

The wires were nicely secured to the old ceramic light fixture. I could either snip them and restrain them or release them using my flathead screwdriver.

I figured I'd save myself the time and effort of rest ripping the wires in hopes the ends were still nice and clean.

Sure enough the wire ends were still bright, uncorroded and shiny.

This is the bottom of the new LED light fixture. Not only are these bright but this style of light will only hang down from the ceiling just one an inch. As you can see, there is a safety clip that accompanies the wires. I have mixed feelings on it. I like the idea that it's a nice safety feature that will keep the light from potentially hanging by just the wires should it come loose. The thing that I don't like is that many times you have vary limited space in the electrical boxes behind the light fixtures in which to push your connected wires back into so this kind of adds to the rats nest. If you are really good (I am not) you can get your connected wires properly stowed back into the electrical box and figure out how to keep that little safety cable and clip out of there.

I always hang onto my little tie wraps. They come in really handy for securing power tool cords etc.

This metal portion is the part that gets screwed to the ceiling. It's the mounting bracket for the LED.

The LED fixture clips in through minimal fixture rotation nicely.

I have black, white, and red wires coming from the house. The copper is the ground.

I connected the green ground wire from the LED fixture to the copper ground house wire.

Here is a picture of the mounting bracket installed with the wires pulled though the center. This step actually comes before connecting any wires. I thought I'd throw this in here for visual representation.


For this particular configuration the red and black wires are "Hot" and the red controls on the on/off switch on the wall. You can see the safety clip and cable at work here. I went with white to white, black LED fixture wire to red house ("hot" switch) wires and ground to ground. The black to black that you see connects to a series of other lights so this remained the same. In the past I've dealt with just white and black wires which made the installation easy for me as I would just do white to white, black to black and ground to ground.

I rotated the LED fixture onto the mounting bracket and it held firmly.

Here is the nice new lighting. It provided a much brighter light than the old bulb that was there. Below is the full video. Please check it out and subscribe to my channel for many more DIY projects and interesting videos.



Comments


bottom of page