BMW E36 LED Footwell light install

If you’re car didn’t have the factory footwell lights, this guide will walk you through the installation of LED or OEM footwell lights that will automatically turn on and off with your dome lighting when you open and close your doors. If you are fairly good with wiring, this install is easy as pie.

IF you want to use OEM parts, these are the BMW part numbers you’ll need for the install.
63 31 8 360 588 Lamp (2x)
61 13 8 377 072 Socket Housing (3-pin connector) (2x)
61 13 0 005 197 Bushing Contact (4x)

If you’re looking to install LED lighting, the process is exactly the same, you’ll just need different lights and to supply your own wire and connectors if you’re not going to solder the connections.

LED Convenience Courtesy Light – or something similar.

Looking at the wiring behind the sunroof motor cover, we can see the Red and Black wires that operate the automatic dome light. Instead of tapping these wires up there, and running your own wires all the way down the a-pillers, it’s simply easier to follow the wires down to the glovebox, and tap them them. Make sure you use a Multimeter to test for continuity to make sure you have selected the right wires.

In the picture below you can see the same red (Positive) and Brown (negative) wires in the glove box.

This picture shows how I tapped the connection to supply power to the LED dome lights we are about to mount. You’ll need to tap in 4 new wires total, 2 positive, 2 negative, each side of the footwell gets a positive and negative wire, so cut them accordingly.

Here is a photo of the footwell panel where I cut the hole to mount the new light fixture, these pictures show the oem dome light. If you’re installing an aftermarket led light, you only need to drill a small hole to run the wires. You’ll secure the dome light to the panel with two small screws.

Here is a photo of the OEM BMW footwell lights off during a well lit day inside of an open parking garage.

Again shown on are euro right hand drive e36 m3, the OEM BMW footwell lights during the day time in the same lighting conditions.

By tapping these lights into the same wiring as the interior dome light means they will also turn on when you manually switch the dome light on as well as when you open the doors to your M3 or 3Series. Alternatively you could run separate wires to a manual control switch. While this DIY guide is very simple, and the install can easily be done in less than an hour, it ads useful and beautiful light to your cabin.