Good to understand
Electrical work in Paris buildings
Paris has some of the oldest housing stock in Europe still in everyday use, and that shapes almost every call-out. Knowing a little about how Paris flats are wired makes it far easier to understand what's gone wrong — and why a particular fix is needed.
The classic Parisian apartment is a Haussmann building: tall stone façades, high ceilings, period mouldings, and a layout that was never designed with modern electricity in mind. When these buildings were converted and re-wired over the decades, the work was often done piecemeal — a circuit added here, a socket there — so the wiring you live with today can be a patchwork of different eras. Add a kettle, a hairdryer, an electric heater and a washing machine to a circuit laid out for a single lamp, and something has to give.
Old and shared consumer units
In older buildings the consumer unit (tableau électrique) — the fuse box — is frequently undersized or out of date. You may still find old screw-in fuses or porcelain holders instead of modern circuit breakers, or a board with too few circuits, so the lights and the sockets in a room share one protection that trips the moment the load rises. In subdivided buildings and converted studios, it's also common to find shared or hard-to-reach consumer units — sometimes on a landing, in a cupboard, or serving several flats — which makes a simple "just reset the breaker" far less simple than it sounds.
Undersized boards and the NF C 15-100 standard
Modern French installations must follow NF C 15-100, the national standard for low-voltage wiring. It sets out how many circuits a home needs, dedicated circuits for high-draw appliances (oven, washing machine, water heater), the use of RCDs (interrupteurs différentiels) to protect against electric shock, and earthing requirements. Plenty of older Paris flats predate the current rules and have never been fully brought up to standard, which is exactly why boards trip, why some rooms run hot, and why an electrician will sometimes recommend upgrading the board rather than patching the same fault again. Every electrician we dispatch works to this standard.
Common faults we see across the city
The pattern repeats from the Marais (4th) to Montmartre (18th): a breaker that keeps tripping because too much is plugged into one circuit; an RCD that won't reset because of moisture or a faulty appliance; sockets that are loose, scorched or sparking after years of use; lighting that fails after a bulb change because of an old fitting; and electric water heaters (cumulus) or heaters that drop out on a tripped circuit. Holiday flats and Airbnb rentals add their own twist — guests arrive to a dead circuit and a host who's offline. Whatever the building and whichever arrondissement, the job is the same: trace the real cause, make it safe, and restore power properly rather than just forcing it back on.
Browse the full list of arrondissements above to read the local detail for your area, or call the English-speaking line and we'll take it from there.
