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I have 1 outdoor light on the front of my house and 2 on either side of my garage that are on the same switch as the light above the front door. How can I keep power to the three lights without them being on the switch? The three lights all have photocells and I want to make the switch control just the front door light so that can be turned on when needed but not burning all night? Aren't the wires from all of these lights meeting in a junction box somewhere and then to the switch? Thanks for any help!

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  • Hello, and welcome to Stack Exchange. There's no way to tell how the lights are wired; perhaps a diagram of their positions relative to the common switch would help.
    – Daniel Griscom
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 12:17
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    Or pictures of the wires in the switch box.
    – bib
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 14:57
  • This isn't an answer to your question but have you considered an LED bulb for the front door light and just leaving it on? A bright 10w LED run for 10 hours a day all year will draw 36 kWh which for most people is about $4.50 on their utility bill. It's so cheap to run these things that an efficiency gain from even spending $50 on wires and switches to optimize it wont pay for itself inside 10 years. There are probably many other far more impactful improvements to save energy you could be making in the meantime.
    – Jeff Meden
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 16:16

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Without opening up the boxes and looking at how they are wired, it's impossible to answer with 100% accuracy. However, even without seeing the wiring, I can say it's doubtful that the wiring for all the lights meets in a single junction box. More likely, the lights are "daisy chained" together.

To do what you want, you're likely going to have to modify some of the wiring. This could include pulling new cable through walls/floors/ceilings. There's no way to know for sure what's involved, without actually seeing how the circuit is wired.

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  • I agree, with @tester pull the the switch you may get lucky and the garage comes to the box with the front door light.
    – Ed Beal
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 13:57

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