 Hey guys, Dan Giles here, and I want to tell you how to wire a three-way switch. That's right, a three-way switch, and you're probably wondering why I stand standing here with these wires and boxes all back there. That's because this is a setup for a three-way switch, so it's all out of the open, out of the wall, so that you don't have to worry about what, nothing is hidden, you know, nothing is hidden. So I'm going to show you what each of these wires back here do so that you'll know and understand how to wire a three-way switch with those wires. So stand by, we're going to get started. So here we go, this is a three-way switch setup. We got a couple of wires coming out of each box. This is the wiring that is typically for a three wire switch setup, so or it could be the other way around. You could have a light fixture coming from this end of this black lead here, the hot leg, and your neutral going up, and that's your setup for a light fixture, and then the hot, the breaker would be hooked into this. Either way you have a three conductor wire here, this is used for your travel, and that's all it's doing. It's traveling. So your three ways are going to have a traveling wire, and that's what this white wire is here. It's traveling from one box to the other. And back and forth. That's why you have a red, a black, and a white lead. Your white lead is going to be your neutral. Of course, all your neutrals are going to tie together, but this particular wire has an extra wire in it. It's got the red color. That's your travel leg, and actually the black is a travel leg as well. That's where your power comes in, and then on the back of your switch, or on the side of your switch, you have a common leg. That common leg is what gets the power. The other two screws on your switch are brass. They're the travel legs. They get the black and the red off of your travel circuit that goes over to the other box, and then you're going to do the same thing on the other box. Now the difference is that you're not getting power coming into this. You're putting power out of this terminal or out of this wire, and it's going to a light fixture. But the concept is the same. The 14.2 wire is black and white in the ground. The black wire goes to your common on the other side. So my best suggestion is to look in your box and find your 14.3, and then identify what your 14.2 wires are. The three wires with the extra wire in it is your travel set. So you would set those aside. You know that your black and your red wires on your travel legs are going to go to the brass colored screws on your switch. Now I'm going to pull a switch here for you. This is the switch. Now you can see on this switch this black terminal up here. That's going to be your common leg. That's what your power is going to go on. And power going through the light or power coming from the breaker, whatever the power source is, that's going to go to your common on the switch. The brass screw here at the bottom, and then also the brass screw on the other side, those are your travelers. Always going to be your travelers. So if you, for some reason, can't figure out which one of these is your common screw, you can also look on the back of the switch and it's going to tell you it's typed on there or it's embossed common. So it'll tell you common on there if you can't identify it on the switch. Look on the back of the switch and read where it says common and you'll find that common lead. The brass are always going to be your travel legs. Now when you are hooking your switch to the travel legs, it doesn't matter black or red what goes on the brass, as long as you're putting travel legs on them. You do, however, it does matter, however, the hot leg going to your light fixture or from your breaker, it matters that the black leg goes to your common. I'm hoping I'm making more, I'm hoping I'm making sense to you here. The best way to do it is to look inside of your box, identify the 14-3 to the 14-2. The three wires is going to be your travel, the two wires are going to be your power. Your power goes to the common leg on your switch, the travel legs, the black and the red go to the brass on the switch, and like I said, it doesn't matter which ones as long as you get them on there. The next step, I'll go ahead and wire one up and show you how to do it. All right, so I've got this set up so that when you open that box and take a switch out of it, this is what you're going to see. You're going to see two black wires, a red wire, got your grounds right here and your neutrals that are all tied together. So I'm just going to leave the neutrals on the grounds like they are because those are standard. All your neutrals are going to tie together in the switch box, all your grounds are going to tie in, twist together, you're going to be wire nutted, and you're going to leave that like that in the box. So the only thing you need to worry about is the two black legs and the red leg. So what you'll want to do is go in here and find the Romax cable that's giving you the black, the red, and the white and the ground. That's a 14-3 for switches, a 15 amp. You're going to use 14 gauge wire. So you look in the box and you'll identify the wiring that has got three wires in that case. That's going to tell you that's your travel set. And in this case, it's these two right here. So what that leads me is this one black leg. So that one black leg is going to the light or it's coming from the breaker. Either way, that's going to be your common leg. That's the hot leg basically. So if this was coming from the breaker, that's going to be your power leg that's going to go to your switch. Again, like I said earlier, on this switch you have a black and you have two brass. This black is your common. That's the only common that you have is the wire going to the light fixture or coming from the breaker. So you're going to tie that into that wire. So first thing we want to do is loop this. We want to loop this so that it goes under and around the screw. And remember, you tighten to the right so that loop needs to be turned to the right and you'll put that under your switch, under that hot leg screw or the common. And then go ahead and secure that. One of the things you want to make sure that you don't do is get any plastic around this wire under the screw because over time that's going to shrink a little bit more and it's going to cause that to be a loose connection and it's going to be a short. The wires should be stripped back about an inch and then you loop them around so that you have all wire under that screw. So we're going to loop these two and as I said earlier on your travel wire, when you're left with a black and a red wire, it doesn't matter on the switch which of these two wires go to which brass screw. Loop that around and tighten that one up. Bring your other one around under the screw and secure that. So we just wired a three-way switch the proper way identifying what our travel wires are and identifying what our power leg is or our common. So you do the same thing on the other side and you'll be golden. Turn the power on and you're going to be able to switch on off on doing a three-way switch. It's just that simple. But like I said, I suggest what you do. Look in the box, identify where your three wires are coming from. If you've got three wires in the ground you know that's your travel and then identify your two wires in the ground and that will tell you that that is your power to the light or from the breaker, from the power source. You get, if you don't do a whole lot of them, sometimes you want to go back to this video. That's what I had to do for a long time until it finally clicked in my head, what was what and what's going on with this. And then once you get it, it's like, wow, it's simple. So there you go. Three-way switch, easy, no sweat and I know you can do it. Guys, I want you to be kind to yourself and be kind to others and I'll see you in the next video.