What should I do with the leftover wire for a ceiling fan when converting to just a light?

Question

I have ceiling fans in my house, which was built two years ago, and each unit has a wall switch on the wall with two switches. One controlled light, one control the fan. My daughter wanted the ceiling fan out of her room and to replace it with a regular light, but I’m not sure what to do with the red wire that won’t have a place to connect to coming out of the ceiling. My original thought was to just cap it, but I wanted to make sure that was the correct thing to do.

Answer 1

The wall box will have at least two cables coming in to it:

• feed line from breaker: 14/2 or 12/2 (black-hot, white-neutral, ground)
• load line to fixture: 14/3 (black-hot 1, red-hot 2, white-neutral, ground)

The 14/3 cable uses one hot for the light, one for the fan, and a common neutral.

To delete the fan you will be abandoning one of the hots: the red one. To do it 'right' you should also get rid of the dual control.

Here's how you do all that:

• At the wall plate, pull out the old fan+light control
• Identify the feed line and load line as described above, then disconnect the control
• Remove the old fan+light
• At the wall plate, clip the load line red wire bare copper back to the insulation. Install a wire nut (cap) on it*
• Do the same thing at the fan end of the red wire (clip and cap)
• Wire the new light fixture to the 14/3 black (hot) and white (neutral) only
• Wire your new light control to feed hot black and load run black

For room light control, my go-to is the Leviton SureSlide with a switch and dimmer. These work for both LED and incandescent, and they're convenient because they have the switch as well as the dimmer.

Why abandon the red wire? Giving priority to the black wire is preferred since that's the 'normal' wire color for a simple circuit. Capping the red wire at both ends avoids a shock hazard, yet allows its future use should someone decide they want a fan/light combo again (say, when your daughter moves out.)

Why delete the fan control? In all likelihood a future replacement fan will use a wireless remote. It will need an unswitched hot, so no need for a wall control: just reconnect the red to hot.

* Make sure you use the right size wire nut for your cap. For a cut #14 with insulation on it an orange wire nut is ok.

Answer 2

Just cap it

That's the easy fix. If you want to, you can replace the 2nd switch with a blank plate (if you have two full size switches) or replace the two switches with a single switch, including a dimmer if you want, if you have two half-size switches in one full-size space. If you replace two switches with one then you cap the red on the switch end as well.