Should I be worried about the spiders in my house?
The short answer
Usually not. The overwhelming majority of spiders found in North American homes are harmless and are predators of other insects. The short list worth identifying is the widow spiders and, in parts of the central and southern United States, the brown recluse. What reduces spiders generally is reducing what they eat.
What actually reduces spider numbers
- Reduce the insects. Spiders go where the food is, and outdoor lighting that attracts flying insects is the largest single driver of spiders around a doorway.
- Remove webs regularly, inside and out, including under eaves and in window frames. It is unglamorous and it works.
- Cut back vegetation touching the building, and clear leaf litter and stacked material against walls.
- Seal gaps at doors, windows, vents and utility penetrations. The same work that keeps rodents out keeps spiders out.
When a treatment is worth buying
Heavy webbing around a building, a garage or a crawl space is a reasonable thing to treat, and so is an identified widow population in a place children or pets use. A broad perimeter spray for ordinary house spiders kills a great deal of other invertebrate life for a modest and temporary benefit, and an honest technician will say so.
Spider identification from a photograph is genuinely difficult and is frequently wrong on the internet. If you think you have found a medically significant species, keep the specimen and have it identified rather than acting on a resemblance.
Also asked
- Does a spider treatment last?
- Residual products have a defined service life and are degraded by sunlight and rain, which is why perimeter spider work is generally sold seasonally. Anything permanent would have to be permanently toxic, which is not how modern residual products are designed.
Companies whose reviewers name spiders
3,545 pest control businesses in the United States and Canada have reviewers who write about spiders. Every listing shows the full rating distribution rather than the average, the share that is one or two star, and whether the owner replies.
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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.