When we go into our basement, we have a switch at the bottom and the top of our stairs. This is great, except that the light we have only lights the top part of our stairs. There are two big overhangs (its a really old house) and when you get to the bottom of the staircase, its pitch black again until you turn into the hallway to cut on the hall lights.

I'm no electrician, but is there any way you can run another set of wires from the existing socket to put another light at the bottom of the stairs, so that when I switch on the upstairs switch, it will turn on two lights in the staircase?

Thanks so much!

Yes it is possible. The idea is to wire the second light in parallel (http://westarenergy.apogee.net/foe/fcspp.asp) with the existing light. This way when you flip the switch, both lights will receive power at the same time.

If your house is really old, say 80 years or so, then the rest below may not necessarily apply, although "hot" and "netural" lines do... :)

Your existing light is connected via "Hot" and "neutral" leads. Normally they are Black and white colored wires respectively.

To wire in parallel, you connect the second light's "Hot" black wire to the existing light's "hot". Do the same for the "neutral" white wire. If your household wiring uses a ground, then connect the ground to the junction box.

Caution: You should first determine where the power is coming from, either through the switch or through the light. If it is through the switch, then the above is reasonably safe to do. If power comes in from the light first, then it's a little more tricky, since a "white" wire is actually used as the "hot". Whoever wired it up, should have put black electrical tape around the white wire, to denote it as a "hot" lead.

Hope that gives you some idea.

With 2 switches, it is called a 3 way light. There are several ways to wire them. You can always tie another load to anything that will be hot when it is. Depending how it is wired, there could be a pair of wires at the lower switch that is hot when the light is. There would be a 3 wire cable from the other switch, and a 2 wire cable going to the light. If so, it mioght easier to run the cable to the new light from the lower switch.