How To Change An Outlet or Light Switch

5 Materials
$10
30 Minutes
Medium

Want to learn how to change an outlet? If you are renovating or even staging your house to sell soon, changing your outlets and light switches is something you should definitely budget for. It doesn’t cost much – especially if you don’t have to hire an electrician! Watch this step by step video to learn how.


If you love this project, grab your quick start DIY guide & subscribe to our blog!

Step 1. Turn off the power.

Before you touch ANYTHING on electrical, you always need to turn off the power.


Step 2. Remove outlet from wall.

Once your power is off, start by getting a screw driver and removing the face plate and then the outlet or light switch from the wall and pull it out, but keep the wires attached.


Step 3. Replace wires on outlet.

Now that your outlet is out of the wall, you can start by removing the wires from the old outlet and immediately put them on your new outlet one by one.

Step 4. Put new outlet in box.

With the new outlet connected, just go ahead and gently push it back in the box.

Try to be sure that the wires stay behind the outlet you don’t want them on the sides and sneaking back out. Next, screw the outlet to the box. Make sure it is straight at this point.


Step 5. Add new face plate.

Last step is to attach your new face plate and you are done.

Doesn’t it look so much better?


Hope you enjoyed this video & step by step tutorial and learned something new! Now, who wants to go replace all the old outlets in their home?!?


If you love this how to change an outlet tutorial and want to learn more like it, be sure to check out all of our renovations tutorials in the archives here!

Resources for this project:
See all materials
Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
Hometalk may collect a small share of sales from the links on this page.More info
Chelsea @ Making Manzanita
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
Go
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?
Comments
Join the conversation
 1 comment
Next