House Electrical Wiring: What You Need to Know

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Wire Gauge

Wires come in different sizes or gauges to work with the amperage of the circuit in which they're used. Counterintuitively, the larger the number, the smaller the wire.

The most common wire gauge sizes you'll encounter in residential work are 14-gauge and 12-gauge. Larger appliances such as electric stoves, electric water heaters, electric dryers, and central air units will often use 10-, 8-, or even 6-gauge wire.

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If you're adding an outlet, you need to use wire that matches the gauge of the existing wiring. How do you determine your old wiring gauge? Here’s a simple visual guide.

Difference Between Wire vs. Cable

While the terms wire and cable are often used interchangeably, technically a wire is one electrical conductor and a cable is multiple conductors, or a group of wires, encased in sheathing.

Electric wires are typically made of aluminum or copper. They can be bare or insulated and usually covered with a thin layer of thermoplastic. If they have a thermoplastic sheath, its color indicates whether the wire is a neutral, ground, or hot wire in your electrical installation. We discuss wire colors in a section of this guide.

Cables contain at least a neutral wire, ground wire, and hot wire that are twisted or bonded together. Depending on its purpose, the cable may contain more wires. The wires in a cable are insulated in their own color-coded layer of thermoplastic. The group of wires is then encased in an outer sheath to form the single cable.

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