Home & Garden Improvements

Architects often create fantastic ambient effects just by being clever with a room’s lighting. A dimmer switch can alter the mood of your room in an instant, from vibrant and zingy to soft and mellow. You’ll need to be very careful with anything to do with electricity, but fitting a dimmer switch won’t require an advanced building skills diploma, it’s definitely a DIY job.

Remove the circuit’s fuse from the consumer box and check that the light really doesn’t work. Next, unscrew the switch plate on the existing switch box. Single switches are straightforward, two-way switches more complex. Either draw a diagram of the wire terminals, which isn’t fool-proof, after all, to err is human or remove a wire from the old switch, one at a time and screw it into place on the equivalent position on the new switch. Make sure there’s no more than a millimetre or two of exposed wire visible from the terminals and check that the wires are really secure in them. A loose connection will be a pain, so check twice and test once.

Screw the new switch plate into place and check that it all works. You might well find that the new switch assembly is too bulky for the old backbox, if so, there’s only one thing to do: replace it with a deeper one. Of course, you’ll have to cut into the wall a little deeper to accommodate it, so be prepared for a little drilling and cold-chiselling. No painting, decorating or plastering required, just a new-look room in a few minutes.