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I purchased a light fixture and the wires attached to the fixture are white, black and green. The junction box where I am planning to install the light was unused and therefore capped. When I removed the cap I came across the following wires: - 2 x white bundles - 1 x black bundle - 1 x orange bundle - 1 x green bundle - 1 x single pink wire

How should I connect the light fixture?

Here's some context. the ceiling fixture would be controlled by a switch on the room, HOWEVER, it would/should also be also be connected to a master all-off switch by the front entrance. If this power-off switch is in the off position all light switches can't turn on.

Update: I opened up the room switch and there's only one pink/red wire attached to it.

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  • Welcome to diy.SE! Is the box already connected to the switches as you desire? What, if anything, was in the box previously?
    – mmathis
    Oct 30, 2016 at 19:41
  • Thanks! It was an unused junction box and therefore it was just covered with a ceiling cap. And yes, it's already connected to the switches.
    – Aiekon
    Oct 30, 2016 at 20:21
  • Open the switch that is supposed to control this fixture and see what color wires are connected to the switch. (Not the master switch, the room switch). And edit that into your question. After it's hooked up then you can just test and I bet the master will just work. My guess is you want red and white in the box pictured here, but tell us what's connected to the switch.
    – Tyson
    Oct 30, 2016 at 20:52
  • Where on this planet are you?
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Oct 30, 2016 at 23:10
  • I am located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I ran out of time today to try and install the light fixture, so will try again tomorrow. I'll post an update then. Thanks all!
    – Aiekon
    Oct 31, 2016 at 4:08

2 Answers 2

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Thanks everyone who provided advice. I was able to get the light working properly. I had to connect the fixture's:

  • Black wire to the junction box pink/red wire
  • White wire to white wire
  • Green wire to green wire
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    Please accept your answer (or one of the others), and upvote any that were helpful. Stack Exchange has a protocol for this sort of thing.
    – isherwood
    Nov 1, 2016 at 18:04
  • Which bundle of white wires did you hook it to?
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Nov 1, 2016 at 23:08
  • Answering your own question is cool here. If you choose best answer you might even get some rep.
    – Harper - Reinstate Monica
    Feb 25, 2018 at 0:15
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You need to verify which one of those is your switch leg (you have test equipment, right?). It sounds like you're on the right track. It's a switched-switch leg, so I'd assume then, that the yellow is the main switch leg, and the red is the local switch leg.

TL;DR; don't care if I burn my house down: hook on to the white and the red, and try it. I'd assume the black is 'always power'. And I'd assume every wire in that box is OK to share with the white neutral (so, try the yellow if you have to).

This answer makes a lot of assumptions that the OP will have to be willing to take responsibility for (and that Canadian electric color schemes largely adhere to the ones in the US).

I just noticed that you may have two separate neutrals there. This may require a little bit more of a sit-down than I thought... Pull all the wires out more (away from each other) and take another picture, if someone doesn't come around with a better answer.

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  • Thanks @Mazura. I've added a new photo to better reflect what cables are in the junction box.
    – Aiekon
    Oct 31, 2016 at 12:55
  • Canadian rules require that green, green/white or bare be ground, white or gray be neutral, and any other color can be any kind of hot, except orange for 3-phase wild-leg. In multiconductor cable (which I bet this is not), white wires can be marked a color to make them hots.
    – Harper - Reinstate Monica
    Feb 25, 2018 at 0:10

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