I am wonder if there are any common “standard” on color coding when wiring 3 and 4 way switches.

All the simple examples show power coming in one end to a 3 way, red and black the travelers and white the neutral. This continues on to the 4 way and then the 3 way with the common connected to the load black and white to the load neutral.

All very nice plain and simple.

But unfortunately all wiring is not that nice and simple.

I did one with 2 4ways and 2 3 ways with the power and load connecting in the center at one of the 4 ways. Now I have cases like this wheree they run the black as hot and used red and white as the traveler. Just did not make sense to me. Looked more like a switch leg.

So I made a rule. Black and reds will always be travelers. White will either be neutral or taped black and then either be hot or switched hot.

That can be used in all cases.

Ran into a strange case. Home is 25 years old. The HO is selling and I fixing up a lot of little things and pointing big things that he needs to hire others for. One of the little things is replace light bulbs and making sure everything works.

There is a large 2 story entry area with an open stair way to the 2nd floor and balcony overlooking the entry area. There is a track lighting over that area that did not work. Compounded with the fact taht the HO did not remember which switches worked these lights.

Pulled on bulb and checked it with an ohm meter and found it good. By process of elemination found 4 candiates for switchs to operate these lights. One at the door to the garage, one at a hallway, one at the bottom of the stairs and one at the top. The later 2 where parts of gangs of 3 3 switches, but the functions of the other 2 where ID’ed.

Pull the coversplates off and remove the switches.

At the bottom of the stairs is a 3 way connected to power and red and black or the travelers and white is the neutral.

Now I don’t have much equipment with me to do any signal tracing, just crudy RS digital VOM that I keep in the truck for emergencies. And it gives me more false reads than good for something like this.

The switch by the garage door is a 3 way dimmer with red and white travelers and black connected to the common.

At the hallway a 4 way with white and red travlers and blacks joined.

But I find in the box at the top of the stairs a 4 way with 2 cables connected to it one with red and black travelers and one with red and white travelers. And 2 wire cable connected to the black and white from the 2 -3 wire cables.

Now at this point I don’t know if any or all of these switches are on the circuit for the light. But I am very confused.

So I start drawing it out and then it hits me. Yes they migth all be on the same circuit. They just switched color codes in the middle.

I get a test light that I can clip on as a load at the last switch and yes all 4 of those switches control that feed and there is nothing else that I know of that it could go to other than that tract light. There is still a problem that some combinations don’t work. Hopefully a bad switch or mixed connection. But still need to get the tract light to work.

Now track is suspended from a 25 ft ceiling and it has transformser at each light and the light hang down about 3ft below the track.

With my 8ft ladder I can only reach the lights so maybe the transformers are bad. But still scratching my head I notice that the end of track is about 6 ft higher than the balcony and end right at the balcony and it looks “funny”.

Get a small ladder up on the balacony and I can reach the track end. There 2 feed wires and a ground wire. and NOTHING TO CONNECT to the track connector adapter is missing.

No idea if it was alway like that or if there had been a “repair” at some time.