This is my first time doing a light fixture. In the ceiling, the wires are black, white and green wire with a copper wire attached to the green wire. In my light fixture, there is a brown wire, blue wire and a yellow wire with green stripe ( which is attached to the fixture housing). I went through online to figure out I have to connect (black with brown wire, white with blue wire) I am just confused how to connect the copper wire(from the ceiling), green wire(from the ceiling) and the yellow wire (from fixture). Do I connect the yellow wire to the copper wire or to the green wire? Hope I explained it clearly.enter image description here

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    Where are you? It sounds like you have an IEC color coded fixture and North American building wiring, which isn't wrong per se, but does raise some questions... – ThreePhaseEel Aug 18 '17 at 22:10

The bare copper wire is a "pigtail" that exists to make your connection to the light fixture easier. I'm guessing that you have a metal junction box (which requires its own ground connection).

Simply nut your fixture's ground wire to it. The key is that all grounds are connected to the panel. It's usually not critical what the actual path is as long as the connections are sound.


United States

  • Ground: Green, yellow/green stripe, or bare wire (same)
  • Neutral: White or gray
  • Hot: any other color


  • Neutral: Blue preferably light blue
  • Hot: Brown is first choice, then varies somewhat

All grounds should be joined together. You are grounding to the supply, and the metal junction box, and the lamp proper, and the lamp shroud if any.

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