To correctly connect the wires, they are color-coded, which allows you to quickly identify the desired conductor in the bundle. But not everyone knows how phase and zero are designated in electrical engineering, Therefore, colors are often confused, which complicates future electrical wiring repairs. In this article we will look at the principles of color marking of wires and tell you how to correctly separate phase, ground and neutral.

Wires must be connected to each other only in strict accordance. If you mix it up, a short circuit will occur, which can lead to failure of the equipment or the cable itself, and in some cases, even to a fire.

Standard wire colors

Marking allows you to correctly connect wires, quickly find the necessary contacts and safely work with cables of all types and shapes. Marking, according to the PUE, is standard, so knowing the principles of connection, you can work in any country in the world.

Note that the old cables produced under the USSR had one conductor color (usually black, blue or white). To detect the required contact, they had to be called or a phase was applied to each wire one by one, which led to unnecessary waste of time and common mistakes(many people remember the newly built Khrushchev buildings, in which, when you press the bell, front door the light in the bathroom turned on, and when you pressed the switch in the bedroom, the voltage in the outlet in the hallway disappeared).

Various significantly simplified the process of creating wiring, and a few years later became a standardin Russia, EU, USA and other countries of the world.

Ground, zero and phase

There are three types of wires: ground, neutral and phase. The coloring is applied to the entire wire, so even if you cut the cable in the middle, you can still figure out which contact is which.Grounding is indicated as follows:

1. Yellow-green color (in the vast majority of cases).
2. Green or yellow.

In an electrical wiring diagram, grounding is designated by the abbreviation PE.

Please note:In drawings and in electrician slang, grounding is often called zero protection. Do not confuse it with zero, otherwise a short circuit will occur.

The zero in the cable is indicated by blue-white or simply blue, designated in the diagram by the letter N. Sometimes it is called the neutral or neutral contact, so be careful and do not confuse these concepts.

Now let's figure it outis used most often. Here you will have a hard time, since there can be a lot of options. We advise you to go the opposite way - first detect the yellow-green ground, then the blue zero, and the remaining wires in the cable will be the phase. They must be connected according to colors to avoid confusion. Most often in three-wire systems they are marked brown, but there may be other options:

• black;
• red;
• grey;
• white;
• pink.

In schematic images, the phase is represented by the letter L. It can be detected with a test screwdriver or a multimeter. When connecting wires, use special clamps or solder them offset from each other so that short circuit or oxidation of contacts with subsequent loss of voltage does not occur.

Classic colors of wires in the cable

Difference between zero and ground

Some novice electricians don't knowand why is it needed at all? Let's look at this question in more detail. Electric current flows through zero and phase, so you cannot touch them. The ground serves to remove voltage if it breaks through to the body of the device. This is a kind of protection that recent years has become mandatory - some devices do not work if they are not grounded.

Attention:do not ignore the grounding requirement - accumulated static electricity or breakdown can damage the device or injure you electric shock.

If you are not sure which wire is ground and which is zero, then use the following tips. They will help you decide without wire color code:

1. Measure the resistance of the wire - it will be less than 4 ohms (check that there is no voltage on it so as not to burn the multimeter).
2. Find the phase, use a voltmeter to measure the voltage between the supposed zero and ground. On the ground the value will be higher than at zero.
3. If you use a multimeter to measure the voltage between ground and a grounded device (for example, a battery in multi-storey building), then the voltmeter will not detect voltage. If you measure the voltage between zero and ground, a certain value will be displayed.

All this is true only for three or more conductor cables. If there are only two wires in the cable, then by default one will be ground (blue), the second phase (black or brown).

Observe cable connections

We are looking for a phase

You already know which one wire color phase, neutral, ground. Let's consider the main question - how to find the phase. If you are going to connect an outlet, then, in fact, you do not care about this issue - there is no difference to which contact you supply phase or zero to. But with a switch the situation is different.

Attention:The phase in the switch always opens, and zero goes to the light bulb. This is necessary so that you do not get an electric shock during repair or replacement of the lamp. The phase must be applied to the bottom contact of the cartridge, zero - to the side.

If there are two wires of the same color in the wiring, then the easiest way to find the phase is with an indicator - by touching bare wire it starts to glow. Before touching the wire, turn off the power, strip the insulation on the wire (1 cm is enough), separate the wires different sides so that a short circuit does not occur. Then turn on the power and touch the indicator to the contact. Thumb hands need to be placed on top part screwdrivers, where the contact pad is located. After this, the LED on the indicator should light up. This will allow you to find the phase, but the device will not help you figure out between zero and ground. To find out what color is the ground wire in a three-wire wire, you will need to use the methods above.

You can find the phase using the indicator

Conclusion

If you create new wiring, be sure to follow the rules adopted in the PUE marking wires in electrical - this will help you in subsequent repairs of the system, because you can easily identify the wires by color. Use yellow/green cable for ground, blue for neutral, brown/black/white for phase. In cables with a large number of phases, connect the contacts only by color, using appropriate clamps and heat shrink. If you have to work with old wiring, where the colors do not meet the standard, then first look for the phase using an indicator screwdriver. The contact that does not light up will be the desired zero.

When laying wires, follow the rules - they should only run horizontally and vertically. There is no need to try to save money by dragging them along an inclined path across the entire wall or ceiling - in the future you simply will not be able to find them or during repairs you will catch/break them, which will lead to serious consequences. Remember once and for all colors of wires in a three-core cable - this will help you in life, because any electrician is faced with repairing sockets, switches, electrical panels, laying new lines, etc.

The Electrician's Bible PUE (Electrical Installation Rules) states: electrical wiring along its entire length should make it possible to easily recognize the insulation by its color.

In a home electrical network, as a rule, a three-wire conductor is laid, each wire has a unique color.

• Working zero (N) – blue, sometimes red.
• Null protective wire nickname (PE) – yellow-green color.
• Phase (L) – can be white, black, brown.

In some European countries there are constant standards for the colors of wires by phase. Power for sockets - brown, for lighting - red.

Wiring colors speed up electrical installation

Painted conductor insulation significantly speeds up the work of the electrician. In the old days, the color of the conductors was either white or black, which generally brought a lot of trouble to the electrical installer. When disconnecting, it was necessary to supply power to the conductors in order to use a control to determine where the phase is and where the zero is. The coloring saved me from this torment, everything became very clear.

The only thing that should not be forgotten when there is an abundance of conductors is to mark, i.e. sign their appointment to switchboard, since conductors can number from several groups to several dozen supply lines.

Coloring of phases at electrical substations

The colors in home electrical wiring are not the same as the colors in electrical substations. Three phases A, B, C. Phase A – yellow, phase B – green, phase C – red. They may be present in five-core conductors along with the neutral conductors - blue and protective conductor(grounding) - yellow-green.

Rules for observing the colors of electrical wiring during installation

A three-core or two-core wire is laid from the distribution box to the switch, depending on whether a single-key or two-key switch is installed; the phase is broken, not neutral wire Nick. If there is a white conductor available, it will be the power supply. The main thing is to maintain consistency and consistency in coloring with other electricians, so that it doesn’t turn out like in Krylov’s fable: “The Swan, the Crayfish and the Pike.”

On sockets, the protective conductor (yellow-green) is most often clamped in the middle part of the device. Maintain polarity, zero worker is on the left, phase is on the right.

At the end I want to mention there are surprises from manufacturers, for example, one conductor is yellow-green, and the other two may be black. Perhaps the manufacturer decided, if there was a shortage of one color, to use what was available. Don't stop production! Failures and errors happen everywhere. If you come across exactly the same one, it’s up to you to decide where the phase is and where the zero is, you just need to run around with the control.

When working with electricity, you may notice that the wire strands are painted in different colors. Interestingly, the colors are never repeated regardless of the number of conductors in one shell. Why this is done and how not to get confused in the color variety - this is what our article is about today.

The essence of color coding of wires

Working with electricity is a serious matter as there is a risk of electric shock. To the common man not so easy to deal with, because by cutting the cable, you can see that all the cores have different colors. This approach is not an invention of manufacturers in order to distinguish their products from competitors, but is very important when installing electrical wiring. To avoid confusion with the color of cable cores, all the variety of colors has been reduced to one standard - PUE. Electrical installation rules state that wire cores must be differentiated by color or alphanumeric designation.

Color coding allows you to determine the purpose of each wire, which is extremely important when switching. Correct connection lived with each other, as well as when installing electrical installation products, helps to avoid serious consequences such as short circuit, electric shock or even fire. Properly connected wires help subsequently carry out repairs and maintenance without problems.

According to the rules, the color of the wires is present along the entire length. However, in reality you can find electrical wires painted in one color. Most often this occurs in old housing stock where aluminum wiring is installed. To solve problems with the color designation of each individual core, heat-shrinkable tubing or electrical tape of different colors is used: black, blue, yellow, brown, red, etc. Multi-colored markings are made at the connection points of the wires and at the ends of the wires.

Before talking about color differences, it is worth mentioning the designation of wires with letters and numbers. Phase conductor in a single-phase network AC denoted by Latin letter"L" (Line). In a three-phase circuit, phases 1, 2 and 3 will be designated “L1”, “L2”, “L3” respectively. Grounding phase wire the nickname is denoted by the abbreviation “LE” in a single-phase network and “LE1”, “LE2”, “LE3” in a three-phase network. The neutral wire is assigned the letter "N" (Neutral). The neutral or protective conductor is designated "PE" (Protect Earth).

Ground wire color code

According to the standards for the use of electrical equipment, all of it must be connected to a network that has a ground wire. It is in this situation that the manufacturer’s warranty will apply to the equipment. According to the PUE, the protection consists of a yellow-green shell, and the color stripes must be strictly vertical. With a different arrangement, such products are considered non-standard. You can often find wires in a cable with a bright yellow or green sheath. In this case, they are used as grounding.

Interesting! The hard single-core ground wire is painted green with a thin yellow stripe, but in the soft multi-core wire, on the contrary, yellow is used as the main one, and green acts as an additional one.

In some countries, it is allowed to install a grounding conductor without a sheath, but if you come across a green-yellow cable with a blue braid and the designation PEN, then you have a grounding combined with a neutral. You should know that the ground is never connected to the residual current devices located in the distribution panel. The grounding wire is connected to the grounding bus, to the housing or metal door of the switchboard.

On the diagrams you can see different grounding symbols, so to avoid confusion, we recommend that you use the following reminder:

Separate color for the neutral wire and a variety of colors for the phase wire

As evidenced by the PUE, the neutral wire, which is often called zero, has a single color designation. This color is blue, and it can be bright or dark, and even blue - it all depends on the manufacturer. Even on color diagrams, this wire is always drawn in blue. In the switchboard, the neutral is connected to the zero bus, which is connected to the meter directly, and not using a machine.

According to GOST, the colors of the phase wires can have any color with the exception of blue, yellow and green, since these colors relate to zero and grounding. This approach helps to distinguish the phase wire from the rest, since it is the most dangerous during operation. It carries current, so it is extremely important to ensure it is properly labeled to ensure safe operation. Most often, the phase conductors in a three-core cable are indicated in black or red. The PUE does not prohibit the use of other colors with the exception of colors intended for zero and ground, so sometimes you can find a phase conductor in the following shells:

• brown;
• gray;
• purple;
• pink;
• white;
• orange;
• turquoise.

If the colors are mixed up

We have given the basic rules for marking L, N, PE conductors in electrical wiring by color, but it often happens that not all craftsmen follow the rules for installing electrical wiring. Among other things, there is a possibility that the electrical wires have changed with a different color of the phase core or even a single-color cable. How not to make a mistake in such a situation and make the correct designation of zero, phase and grounding? Best options in this case, the wires will be marked according to their purpose. It is necessary to use cambrics (heat-shrinkable tubes) to designate all elements that extend from distribution panel and follow to the home. The work may take a long time, but it is worth it.

To work to identify the identity of the veins, use indicator screwdriver- this is the simplest tool, which is easy to use for subsequent marking of phases. We take the device and with its metal tip touch the bare (!) conductor. The indicator on the screwdriver will light up only if you have found a phase wire. If the cable is two-core, then there should be no more questions, because the second conductor is zero.

Important! Any electrical cable always has L and N cores, regardless of the number of wires inside.

If a three-core wire is being examined, a multimeter is used to find the ground and neutral wires. As is known, electricity may be present in the neutral conductor, but its doses will barely exceed 30V. To measure on the multimeter, you must set the AC voltage measurement mode. After this, touch the phase conductor, which was determined using an indicator screwdriver, with one probe, and the remaining ones with the second. The conductor who showed smallest value on the device will be zero.

If it turns out that the voltage in the remaining wires is the same, you need to use the resistance measurement method, which will allow you to determine the ground. Only conductors whose purpose is unknown will be used for work - the phase wire is not involved in the test. The multimeter is switched to the resistance measurement mode, after which one probe touches an element that is known to be grounded and cleaned to metal (this could be, for example, a heating battery), and the second touches the conductors. The ground should not exceed a reading of 4 ohms, while the neutral will have a higher reading.

Currently, the industry produces electrical wires different sections with alphanumeric and color markings along the entire length of the wire. The main function of any type of marking is the visual recognition of each individual wire strand for its intended purpose, as well as facilitating (accelerating) the installation and operation of wires.

In addition, the separation of cores by color in a power electrical circuit is also one of modern requirements safety precautions regulated by GOST.

Electric wire widely used in production and in everyday life both in AC power circuits (single-phase network 220V or three-phase network 380V), and in circuits DC. Electrical wire can be single-core or stranded. The wire cores can be single-wire or multi-wire.

Single-phase two-wire network 220V

A two-wire electrical network is an electrical network with two electrical conductors. One conductor is phase, the second is neutral. Two-wire electrical systems are still found in older homes today in the form of conventional electrical wiring. Old electrical wiring is a two-wire aluminum wire(“noodles”) with white insulation.

A two-core wire is used to connect switches, ordinary sockets, and lamps.

Because Since both wires of such a wire have the same color, it is quite problematic to visually distinguish phase from zero. Therefore, in order to determine where the phase is and where the zero is, use an indicator screwdriver, a probe, a “continuity tester,” a tester, a multimeter or another electrical measuring device.

Today, in order to distinguish a phase from zero during operation, during installation either a two-core wire with cores of different colors or two single-core wires are used.

As a two-core wire, a flexible wire with a brown and blue (light blue, light blue) core is often used. It is strongly recommended to use a brown conductor as a phase conductor, and a blue conductor as a neutral conductor.

Often there are two-core wires with different colors of cores. For example, in such wires the phase wire may not be brown, but red, black, gray or another color.

If two separate single-core wires are used, there are two marking options. The first is the use of wires of different colors. For example, you can use a red wire as a phase, and a blue wire as a zero.

If wires of the same color are used, then the phase and neutral wires can be marked either using colored electrical tape, or by using colored heat-shrink tube. When using colored electrical tape, red electrical tape is wound on the phase wire at the beginning and end, and blue electrical tape is wound on the neutral wire.

When using heat shrink, marking single-color wires is almost the same as marking with electrical tape. Red heat shrink is put on the phase wire, and blue heat shrink is put on the neutral wire.

At home, you can mark wire cores with other colors.

Color marking in a single-phase three-wire 220V network

A three-wire electrical network is a network with three electrical conductors. Currently, a three-wire network is becoming more and more common, especially for new wiring.

As in two-wire network one conductor is phase, the second is neutral, but the third conductor is a protective ground wire, which serves to protect against electric shock. A three-wire network uses a three-core wire, usually with a brown, blue and yellow-green core.

The brown wire is a phase, the blue wire is a neutral conductor, the yellow-green wire is a conductor protective grounding. To avoid confusion, it is not recommended to use a yellow-green colored conductor as a phase or neutral conductor.

A three-core wire with colored cores is used to connect modern European-style sockets, which, in addition to the phase and neutral contacts, also have a contact for connecting a grounding conductor. Three-core wires are also used to connect lamps.

Color codes for wires in a three-phase 380V network

A three-phase electrical network can be four-wire or five-wire, i.e. with four or five wire cores. The only difference is the presence or absence of a protective grounding conductor. Those. a four-wire network consists of three phase conductors, a neutral working conductor and the absence of a protective grounding conductor. A five-wire network consists of three phase conductors, a neutral working conductor and the presence of a grounding conductor.

In both four-wire and five-wire networks, a blue conductor is used for the neutral working conductor, and a yellow-green conductor is used for the grounding conductor. Regarding three phases A, B and C, then most often brown, black and gray cores are used for them, respectively. But there are also other colors of wire cores.

A four-core and five-core wire is used to connect a three-phase load or to divide a single-phase load into groups.

DC network

IN electrical network DC usually uses two conductors. The first conductor is the plus, and the second conductor is the minus. A red wire is used as a positive conductor, and a blue wire is used as a negative conductor.

Based on the results of all of the above, it is worth noting the following: despite certain standard requirements for color marking of wires, without preliminary checking it is not recommended to rely 100% on the color of a particular wire core.

For a Russian girl, urination will not be very good, but for a Latvian girl it will do.

Vibiraj kak neo:D

Depends on the shade, but blue and brown colors quite compatible.
Especially if the shoes suitable model that matches the dress


Barset has already given you the right advice.
Actually, it’s better to have a motorist tester, well, such a device with an arrow. A schoolchild can learn to use it. The price is low, as is the device itself.
If you don’t want a tester, as a last resort, use a light bulb carrier with wires. The car body is usually a minus. Well, then there’s purely primitive logic for the wires: it lights up, it doesn’t light up, it lights up when turned on. In my practice, I came across a female driver. She made it even simpler: she turned to another (male) driver.

Light absorption capacity.
From white, which reflects all light (0% light absorption), to black, which absorbs all light (100% light absorption).

General minus, you can't go wrong.....
red - left
white - right
golden - minus, "earth"...

Perhaps this is the Bronze-winged Pigeon. The Bronze-winged Pigeon belongs to the common birds of Australia, inhabiting desert areas overgrown with low bushes or isolated trees. These clumsy, heavy birds fly very quickly and cover considerable space in a short time in search of water. The bronze-winged pigeon also lives in the cultural landscape, where it is better provided with food and water. Its cooing is heard most often at night and in the morning and vaguely resembles the mooing of cows.
The bronze-winged dove breeds from August to February; it builds its nest on horizontal tree branches not high above the ground and near water. Both birds incubate alternately. These pigeons feed on the seeds of acacia and other trees, collecting them on the ground. It is kept in zoo corners more often than other species of this bird.