How to Install LED Lights in a Fluorescent Fixture

Looking to upgrade your fluorescent fixtures to LED? You might like the idea of the energy savings and long life of LED lamps—and our new lower pricing on LED tube lights makes the idea of upgrading that much more attractive—but you may be holding back out of concerns for how much trouble actually doing the upgrade will be.

No worries! We've put together a 5-minute step-by-step guide showing how simple the process is.

Here's how to rewire a fluorescent fixture for LED tubes:

First, make sure the power's off, then we'll open the fixture and take out the tubes.

After that, we'll remove the ballast cover:
Step 2: Remove the ballast cover

Cut and remove all of the wires, but leave enough length on the line and neutral coming into the fixtures to connect one of your tombstones.
Step 3: Cut and remove the wires, leaving enough length to connect to the tombstones at one end

Remove one set of tombstones.
Step 4: Remove the tombstones at one end of the fixture

These tombstones are shunted; we need nonshunted.
Step 5: If you don't already have nonshunted tombstones, you'll need to replace your shunted tombstones with nonshunted

You can use some of the leftover wire from the fixture to rewire your new tombstones.
Step 6: If you have multiple tubes in your fixture, you'll need to wire the tombstones in series

Now you're just going to strip a small length off your line and neutral wires.
Step 7: Strip an inch or so of insulation from your line and neutral wires in the fixture

Now insert your line and neutral into one of the tombstones that has two remaining ports.
Step 8: Insert your line and neutral into one of the end tombstones

Snap your tombstones back into place.
Step 9: Snap your tombstones back into the fixture

Now you can remove the ballast. You never have to worry about one of these again.
Step 10: Remove the ballast

Now remove any extra wires. You can put your ballast cover back on if you'd like to, but it's optional.
Step 11: Clean up the wires and replace the ballast cover

One side of the tube will be labeled AC INPUT. You're going to want to plug that into the tombstones we just wired up.
Step 12: Install the LED tubes by inserting the AC INPUT end of the tubes into the newly wired tombstones

Now that your tubes are in, you're good to go.
If you're keeping your original diffuser, or if your fixture has no diffuser, you're done

We replaced the old prismatic diffuser with one of our new ones. It disperses the light a lot more evenly.
For more even light distribution, you may replace your old diffuser with one from ELEDLights.com

You can purchase just the LED tubes from ELEDLights or complete LED retrofit kits for fluorescent troffers. And if you run into any trouble with your upgrade, our team is just a phone call, text, or email away!