What Do Electrical Wire Colors Mean? | Mr. Electric

Houses and businesses have a lot of wires that come in a variety of colors. Mr. Electric®, a Neighborly company, explains what they mean and when to use them.

Black: Black electrical wires are most often found in residential dwellings and are used to transfer power to switches and outlets in all types of circuits. Always consider black wires to be live.

Red: Red electrical wires in 220-volt circuits are the secondary live wires. They can be found in residential dwellings and can be used in some types of switch legs. It’s possible to link two red wires together.

Blue and yellow: Blue and yellow electrical wires are mostly found in commercial buildings. They are used as the live wires pulled through a conduit. Yellow wires are used as switch legs to ceiling fans, structural lights, and outlets paired with light switches. Blue wires are most often used as travelers for three- or four-way switches.

White and grey: White and grey electrical wires are your neutral wires. Their purpose is to connect to the neutral bus bar within an electrical panel. White wires can be found in residential dwellings. Grey wires can be found in commercial settings.

Green: Green electrical wires ground electrical circuits. They connect to the grounding terminal in an outlet box and run to the ground bus bar in an electrical panel. Green wires act as a failsafe, giving electricity a place to escape into the ground.

Note: The copper wire is the ground wire in residential wiring.

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[sachinsp]

Short, concise and apt for an extremely basic What/why/how question when it comes to electrical fixtures. Great video and helpful to the letter. Thank you so much 😊

[billgooding]

I have balck red and white coming out from the wall, I'm connecting a cook top that has black red and green wires...which is which?

[King_Bored]

The music is too loud. It's all too fast. Audio would have been helpful.

[dcalvarado]

I have Gray, purple, brand and black on speed switch on my ceiling fan

[caseykemper]

I got a single phase 15 amp wire, the colours are brown solid green an green with yellow strip WTF

[kupg]

It depends on the country & a lot of Americans presume there the only country in the world..
In Europe black can be neutral blue is often neutral yellow with green stripe is earth & brown or red is live particularly in England red blue & striped green yellow are the 3 main colours used.lots of lights are not polarity conscious unless you get a fan light or led with a circuit involved in modern fittings or bulbs.

[docimma]

I had utilities mark electrical wires for purpose of extending my fence. Started to dig not near the marking and cut super thin yellow wire about 8” deep. What is it?

[marilynbuschle]

Yikes, I’m more confused than I was before the video. Did you have anyone watch this before you posted it!! Way to fast (couldn’t even read 1/2) and the music was annoying. A real life, slower demonstration would have been better.

[SpeeD]

Please help

Ive got red, green and yellow, green

How to fix

[steveeb]

You show a brown wire and don't explain what it could be !?!