Just moved in an house, 3 yrs old, and have found a light problem. My great room has a ceiling fan w/lights. The wall switch has 2 switches side by side. #1 operates the fan w/light, #2 operates the hall light and fan w/light. How do I get #2 to operate just the hall light?

So each of these switches operates the lights in the fan, and one also controls the hall?

You will need to open the switches and see exactly how the switches are wired, you may be able to take the switch leg going to the fan/light off the switch that is controlling the hall, leaving the hall separate.

Once you open the switches, perhaps , if your not sure, you can provide some pictures.

It is common to replace a hallway light with a light/fan combination. That is what I believe has happened to one of your hallway lights. The other hallway light is probably original.

For this case, you can replace the light/fan combo back to its original light or you can turn the fan off.

Otherwise, you need to add another switch to wire the light independent of the hallway light/fan combination (done properly it is a big job).

Ok, maybe I'm seeing this differently than the last two responses. Because the way I read it, you have two switches, right next to each other, that both control the same fan/light and one also controls another light? If that's the case then someone accidentally wired the two switches in series and it is an easy fix.

ceilingfanrepair, I tried to fix the problem this weekend but no luck. Here's what I have. 1 each 3-way switch for the fan/light combo, and 1 single pole switch for the hall light (should this also be a 3-way? 2 different switches for 1 light). Cable #1- white wire, black and grnd, cable #2 -red, white, black and grnd, cable #3 same as #2. Can you tell me how to wire from this description?

But the single pole switch also operates the fan/light? I'm still a little unclear on what the original problem is. I hope you didn't unhook the three cables as we will probably need to know what they connected to.

Switch 1 operates the fan/light and hall light. Switch 2 is suppose to operate just the hall light. Yes I did remove all the cables

Do you have a volt meter? I don't supppose you remember how the cables were originally hooked.

So if I understand correctly, in order to have the hall light on you also need to have the fan/light on, but the hall light has a separate switch?

Unfortunetly I did not map the wires before disconnecting them. I do not have a volt meter, but am thinking of buying one and yes you do understand my problem.

Ok so I stand by my original theory, that the hall light circuit was getting it's supply switched from the other switch, rather than direct from the supply. This would have been a fairly easy thing to fix if everything was still hooked up, you would have had to switch one wire.

But since everything's unhooked, and we have to hook it up from scratch, I think I'll hand it over to TK who likely has far more insight.