Stop walking across a dark room to turn on the light. Install a 3-way switch and control lights from two locations.

One of the black wires will bring power to the switch, the other will energize the light fixture; this is commonly referred to as, power in and power out.

Below, Donnelly tells AD how to wire a light switch with this simple step-by-step process for a single-pole light switch without zapping yourself along the way.

My house was built in the 50s, with wiring from that time period. I'm trying to understand how to connect a modern switch up in the place of an existing old one and it just isn't making sense to me.

Installing a wireless light switch is a simple upgrade that you can accomplish in an hour or less. You can control lights from as far as 100 feet away without running any wires through the walls.