What the brits call a one-way switch, the yanks call a two-way switch. * For the Americans reading along, it's worth noting that light switch terminology is different in the US and the UK. I suspect if you look in the back box you will find a bit of terminal block joining two black wires and a blue wire. It looks like you have two red wires that are permanently live, and a red wire and a yellow wire that are switched lives. When people did this, they usually used the blue wire for the neutral**, if only one of the lives was switched they would likely use the red as the permanent live and yellow as the switched live. The wire colours for two-way switching are pretty arbitrary there has never been a standard.Īs for the left and centre switches, it looks like someone is using a three and earth cable to carry a neutral and two live conductors, either a permanent live and a switched live or two separate switched lives. The rightmost switch is the second switch of a two-way switching system and it's wiring is probablly unrelated to the other two and carried in a dedicated three and earth cable. So old three and earth is red yellow and blue (plus a bare earth), while new three and earth is brown black and grey (plus a bare earth). "Three and earth" cable in the UK is always manufacturered in the three phase colours (despite rarely if-ever being used for three-phase). Your old switch follows the "unusual" labelling, your new switch follows the regular labeling but adds an extra digit to clarify which terminal belongs to which switch.Īs for making sense of the wiring, the following is my best guess as to what is going on, but one would need to examine what is going on in the back box to be sure. However occasionally switches are labeled with L1 for the common terminal and L2 and 元 for the other two terminals. Most switches are labeled with "com" for the common terminal and L1 and L2 for the other two terminals. The other confusing thing is there are two ways to label the terminals of a two-way switch. The new switch is the other way up, the leftmost and rightmost switches have one terminal at the top and two at the bottom, while the middle switch has two terminals at the top The middle switch has two terminals at the top and one at the bottom. So on the old switch, the leftmost and rightmost switches have two terminals at the top and one terminal at the bottom. So you will commonly see unused terminals. Secondly, the switches that make up multi-gang switches are nearly always two-way switches*, even if they are being used as one-way switches. You can usually figure out where the triangles are by counting the terminals. It's normal (but not universal) for the triangles of adjancent switches to be the opposite way up. The first thing you need to know is that on UK multi-gang switches, the terminals for each switch nearly always form a triangle with two terminals at the top and one at the bottom or vice-versa. It also looks like your new switch is metal and has an earth terminal, that terminal needs to be connected to the installation earth, there should be an earth terminal and/or wires in the backbox that you can connect it to with a short flylead. The bottom row of the old switch maps to the top row of the new one and vice-versa.
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