Tutorial–Turning a Hard Wired Light into a Swag Light

My first tutorial!

This tutorial is about the new silver chandeliers that I gave you a sneak peek of in Thursday’s post.

If you are like me and purchased a chandelier (or other light) that is supposed to be hard wired into the ceiling, but you don’t have a ceiling outlet box, there is a solution.

This whimsical skateboard fixture shows the ceiling mount and how a hard wired light would look.

However, as long as you have an electrical outlet on the wall nearby and can plug things in, you can turn your meant to be hard wired light into a swag fixture.

I purchased two of these chandeliers.  They are meant to be hard wired.

However, as mentioned, I did not have a ceiling outlet box over our night stands, which is where these two puppies found their home.

Here are the steps I took to turn them into swag lights that are able to just be plugged in.

Material needed:
Light fixture
Swag kit
Shrink tubing
Wire nuts
Blow dryer or heat gun

1.  If your light fixture is new, open the packaging.  Unwrap everything.

2.  Buy a swag kit at a store like Lowes.   The swag kit is usually located near the ceiling fans and includes a chain, wires, and switch.

3.  See diagram to get a feel for the anatomy of your supposed-to-be hard wired light.

Your light fixture should look something like this at the top.  It has a ceiling canopy, retaining collar, and a fixture mounting bar, all with chain and wires coming out and down to the actual fixture.

4.  Unscrew the canopy and mounting bar.  Pull them off of the wires.

Then, un-hook the retaining collar from the chain and remove it from the chain and wires.  It should look like this.

Feed the three wires through the last chain link like this:

5.  Open the swag kit.

Only remove the wiring.  It will have a plug on one end and two wires on the other.  Like this:

6.  You will notice that the light fixture has three wires.  Two that are coated and one that is not.

The one that is not is the ground wire.  You will ignore it during most of this process.

The swag kit wires includes only two wires, both of which are coated (see above).  The two coated wires on the light fixture will match up with the two on the swag kit wire.

7.  Slide the shrink tubing onto the swag wiring, over the two coated wires.

7. Add more chain from the swag kit if needed at this time.  Attach the swag kit chain to the light chain and the swag wires.  I did not need this for my light.  There was enoug chain on the fixture itself.

8.  Put the swag wiring and lighting wiring side by side.  Match the two wires from each strand together.   If you have wires with colors on them (red, white, black, blue, or green), match those colors up.  Red goes to red, etc.  Mine do not have colors as I’m just closing a circuit.

9.  Twist them just a little like this:

10.  Time to use your wire nuts.

Screw it onto the end of the wires.   Cover the wires.

11.  Make each wire nut face opposite directions so that the shrink tubing can fit over them.

12.  Wrap them with electrical tape.

13.  Slide the shrink tubing over the electrical tape.

14.  Time to shrink it!  Use a heat gun if you have one.  Or, if you are like me and do not have one, use a hair dryer.

15.  Pull the ground wire over the tubing and use electrical tape to secure it to the tubing.  This will hold it in place.

16.  Once the shrink tubing has shrunk to half the size, you are ready to hang the light!!

Attach hooks to the ceiling and hang the chain on the hooks.

Note: You will have left over pieces from the light fixture and from the swag kit.

17.  Here it is hung and plugged in.  Attach a switch to it if you would like to turn it on and off that way.

Congrats!  You just converted a hard wired light into a swag light!

P.S.  I’m not an electrician.  Please do this at your own risk.  And, I did learn to take such photos on a contrasting background.  I apologize if any are difficult to decipher.