How do I prepare for bed bug treatment?
The short answer
Get the preparation list from the company in writing and follow it exactly. It will usually involve laundering and hot-drying all textiles and sealing them, stripping and leaving the bed accessible, clearing floors and closets, and specifically not moving furniture or belongings into untreated rooms.
What the list usually includes
- Wash and tumble dry all bedding, clothing and soft furnishings on the hottest setting the fabric allows, then seal them in bags until the treatment is finished. The dryer, not the wash, is what does the work.
- Strip the bed and leave the mattress, box spring and frame accessible from all sides.
- Clear the floor, and empty closets and dressers if asked — the technician needs to reach the voids behind them.
- Pull furniture away from walls where asked.
- Do not move anything into another room. This is the instruction people break, and it is how a one-room job becomes a whole-home job.
Why more than one visit is normal
Eggs are protected, and no conventional treatment reliably kills all of them. A program is normally built around returning at an interval timed to the hatch, and a single-visit price for a bed bug job is a price for half a job. Ask how many visits are included before you compare quotes.
Do not throw out the mattress before treatment. It rarely helps — most of a bed bug population lives in the frame and the surrounding room, not in the mattress — and an encasement after treatment does the same job for far less.
Also asked
- Will I have to throw furniture away?
- Usually not. Most furniture is treatable, and discarding it without treating the room simply moves a portion of the population out of the building while leaving the rest. If something genuinely cannot be treated, the company should say so and explain why.
- Can I stay in the room between visits?
- In most programs yes, and in fact it is often preferred, because a treated room with nobody in it gives the remaining bugs no reason to move and encounter the treatment. Ask the technician, and do not sleep in another room without asking.
Companies whose reviewers name bed bugs
697 pest control businesses in the United States and Canada have reviewers who write about bed bugs. Every listing shows the full rating distribution rather than the average, the share that is one or two star, and whether the owner replies.
Read next
- How do I know if I have bed bugs?Look for the evidence rather than the bites: small dark ink-dot staining along mattress seams and in the bed f…
- Heat treatment or chemical treatment for bed bugs?Heat kills all life stages including eggs in a single treatment and leaves no residual, so anything that survi…
- I have bed bugs in a rental. What now?Report it in writing with photographs the day you confirm it, do not move belongings to another room or unit, …
- How do I prepare for a pest control visit?Ask for the preparation list in writing when you book, and do all of it — treatment failure is more often inco…
General information about pest problems and about hiring, not advice about your specific property. Pest control licensing, wildlife protection and landlord and tenant law are all set state by state and province by province across the United States and Canada, so your own regulator is the current answer. How we read the data.