Footwell LED add on dome circuit

This is an attempt at a write up on installing footwell LED lights that work with the dome light on my 2002 Tacoma. I installed these a few days ago after research on TW to identify the wiring associated with this circuit. Contributors to TW were very helpful and I learned there is tremendous variation from year to year on wiring. I hold no responsibility for any damage to yourself or your vehicle from the information in this thread as I am but a rank amateur and no electrical expert by any means. That said I did not have a problem pulling this off on my Tacoma.
I finally determined the wiring runs through a plug behind the fuse panel at the drivers side kick panel. Three wires are in this plug – black (constant 12V supply), black/white (ground for door switch which allows the light to fade after the door is closed) and green (also ground that I didn’t need so I didn’t concern myself with the functionality of this wire). After removing the ground from the battery (yep no radio for this job), I tapped into the black wire with a 12V feed to an inline 1 amp fuse to feed the LED strips. I purchased cheap 8” strips from Wally World.


The next step was to remove the A arm molding and fish a wire for the ground circuit up to the head liner and then over to the dome assembly. I found it helpful to remove the visor on the drivers side along with the dome assembly so I would have an extra hole to work with. I left this ground hanging through the headliner until I could borrow a soldering iron.



Secure the wires in the A arm and under the dash with zip ties. The little ones did the trick for me. I ran the wiring to the center of the dash behind the radio where I then tied in both lights and ran them from there. Make sure you ID the power and ground on the LED to get them wired correctly or they will not light up then there is aggravation to redo those connections. The ground wire to the switch was soldered in to the top side of the switch so when you flip it and ground is made either by turning to on position or to the door position with the door open the lights will come on just like the dome light. Sorry I didn’t get a picture of that but it is the back side of the pivot point for the arm you flip to control the light.


Finally the finished effect at night. Picture is bad due to a really bad camera phone but you can get the idea.