Skills › 🔧 Home & car

Reset a tripped circuit breaker

Half the room went dark? Flipping a tripped breaker back takes seconds, if you push it the right way.

⏱ 45s

A home electrical panel with its door open, showing two columns of breaker switches.
BrokenSphere via Wikimedia Commons · source · CC BY-SA 3.0
  1. Switch off the lights and unplug the appliances in the room that lost power.
  2. Open your electrical panel and find the breaker sitting at OFF or stuck in the middle.
  3. Push it all the way to OFF first, then firmly back to ON.
  4. If it trips again, or the power doesn't come back, leave it and call a licensed electrician.

Tip: A tripped breaker is doing its job. Repeat trips usually mean too much plugged into one circuit, a damaged cord or a wiring fault.

Try it now: Open your panel and check whether the breakers are labelled. If they aren't, note which one runs the room you're in next time it trips.

Practice in the feed →

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