Bed Bugs: What To Do In The First 24 Hours

Where to look

Check the mattress seam, the box spring edge, the headboard joints and the crease where the frame bolts together. You are looking for rust-coloured spots, black specks like ground pepper, pale shed skins, or the insects themselves, which are flat, reddish brown and roughly apple-seed sized. Bites in a line or cluster appearing overnight are suggestive but not conclusive, because reactions vary enormously between people.

This has nothing to do with cleanliness

Worth stating plainly, because most people who call us have spent a week feeling embarrassed. Bed bugs arrive in luggage, second-hand furniture, shared laundry and delivery packaging. Immaculate homes get them. The only thing tidiness changes is how many hiding places they have.

Three reactions that make it worse

Spraying a retail insecticide, which scatters the population into neighbouring rooms and turns one bedroom into three. Moving to the sofa or a spare room, which relocates the infestation to wherever you sleep. Throwing out the mattress, which is expensive and solves little, because they are in the frame and baseboards as well.

What to do instead

Strip the bed, wash everything on the hottest cycle the fabric allows, dry it hot and bag it. Keep sleeping in the same bed, which feels wrong but concentrates the population where it can be treated. Pull the bed clear of the walls. Photograph anything you find before you clean it. Then book treatment.

Expect a second visit

Eggs are well protected and can hatch after the first treatment, so a follow-up is routine rather than a sign of failure. Any quote you accept should already include it. Call (877) 875-5384 and we will send the preparation list.

Call (877) 875-5384