Red and Green Wire Color Scheme

[Chetlaham]

How does red and green look as a wire color scheme for a building? (code aside) Yay or nay? Or would do personally choose another color combo that looks better? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Davitu-Wires...p8&dib_tag=se&keywords=bvvb+wire&qid=17098301

 

[aussie-plugs]

Safety issue with red/green?

I thought one of the reasons that colour combination was no longer used (at least in Australia) was that a colour blind electrician could confuse the two colours. I believe different colours (brown ACTIVE; blue NEUTRAL; green or yellow/green EARTH) were brought into play to avoid this potential safety issue

 

[novum]

The current IEC colours came from CENELEC European colours that were standardised in the 1960s and rolled out in the 70s for flexes and the fixed wiring later.

The colour scheme definitely took colour blindness into account, but it was also about avoiding clashes with what were then widespread colour codes in Europe.

The striped ground colours were used both for ease of identification.

The scheme added black and grey as the L2 and L3 phases

So the current system is

Ground : Green & Yellow Stripes
Neutral : Blue
L1 : Brown
L2 : Black
L3 : Grey

The idea is that the dark colours now = hot wire.

 

[Chetlaham]

Good points in regards to color blindness, I had not thought of that. 

 

[qsd-dan]

I'm color blind in certain red/green/brown colors. I can clearly see the difference in that pic though.

 

[me]

Green could be mistaken for an earth.

I preferred the UK's old red is phase, and black is neutral colour scheme to our current brown and blue standard. I've also found the new 3 core (brown, black, grey and earth) used for 2 way light switches quite hard to distinguish when the cable was a bit dusty and there's not a lot of light, while I could still easily distinguish all the colours of the older cables.

I also preferred the old red, yellow, blue, and black three phase colouring, to the current brown, black, grey, and blue. Black was neutral, but is now a phase wire, and blue was a phase, but is now neutral.

 

[Chetlaham]

Dan, what color pairs can you see or discriminate? For example:

 

Red/Black

 

Red/Yellow

 

Red/Blue

 

Blue/Yellow

 

I really curious how do you perceive these 4 colors and how easy it would be to tell them apart if you ran across them. Pardon my curiosity but your condition is letting me have a greater insight on things. 

 

[qsd-dan]

It's certain shades, especially around similar colors...not really a single color itself.

One can test themselves here:

https://enchroma.com/pages/color-blindness-test

 

[Chetlaham]

Thanks. My results came back as "normal" but its always nice to know how others see the world so I can accommodate them better.

 

[novum]

The problem is that from a U.K. or Irish perspective red being seen as meaning live makes sense because that’s what we are used to. We also associate green with ground. However, that’s just because that’s a familiar convention. In Germany for example, in old wiring red was associated with ground. In some systems green was a phase colour. There’s as much logic to that as our systems, but they’re just what’s familiar.

A lot of systems allowed all non defined colours for L2, L3 or as alternative live/switched lives.

Some systems used grey as neutral.

If you presented someone here or in the UK with black and white wiring, as per the U.S., a lot of us would assume that black might be neutral and white might be live/hot based on old British/Irish use of black as a neutral colour.

The CENELEC/IEC colours were picked to avoid clashes with at least the most widespread older systems. So when you see modern wiring it’s fairly obvious it’s modern and not some old system. You’ll always see blue, brown and yellow/green. So it’s fairly obvious you’re not dealing with something else.

The general logic now is dark colours (brown, black and grey) = live/hot
Blue is always neutral
Green/Yellow strips is always ground.

It will take decades for all the old fixed wiring to disappear in Europe but it will eventually vanish, just like you really don’t encounter old national standards in appliance flexes unless you’re using very vintage equipmen.

 

[Chetlaham]

BVVB Sample

Ok, so I ordered a sample of BVVB wire from Amazon. It came stranded instead of solid and brown and blue instead of red and blue like the listing. The quality is surprisingly good, the outer covering is strong, and the wire appears to be real copper.

 

 

The concept is soild, just needs some tweaking.

 

[Chetlaham]

 

From Google, love the various color combinations.

Brown and blue is just to boring/dull for my tastes.