How to Tell if You Have Bed Bugs and What You Can Do About It
January 24, 2022What Are Bedbugs?
Bed Bugs are flat, reddish-brown, oval shaped insects that commonly hide in your bed, furniture, curtains, shoe racks, appliances and feed on human blood to survive. These blood sucking insects don’t fly, but they move very fast and they can easily fit in tiny crevices of your home. If you’ve been having itchy bites at night, you might have them welcomed in your house.
Here are ways to find out if you have bed bugs at home:
Know Where Bed Bugs Hide
Bed bugs usually hide in cracks and crevices of your home. Places where you least expect them to be. The most common way they can travel to your home is from stowaway luggage, clothing, and secondhand furniture. If you’re unsure where to find them, here’s a simple bedbug checklist:
Bedbug checklist
- Cracks in bed frames
- Behind hanged picture frames and paintings
- Under loose wallpaper
- In between wallpaper and ceiling crevices
- In curtain folds
- In furniture joints
- Check mattress tags and box springs
- Between couch cushions
Signs You Have Bed Bugs
Although bed bugs are small and can be hard to find, there are also other ways to tell if your home is infested by these pesky creatures.
1. If you have an inexplicable musty odor
A sign that there could be a bed bug infestation is the musty odor you can smell upon entering the room. Bed bugs release pheromones and it can create a musty smell especially when there’s a big congregation of bed bugs in your home.
2. If you find dark spots on your walls
Bed bugs can also leave fecal stains on the walls of your home. If you can find stains in your bedroom, you might wanna check your walls. Common places you can find these stains are on the corner of your walls or behind picture frames.
3. Blots of blood on your sheets
Dark stains on your sheet can be quite alarming by the time you wake up in the morning, however, it may just be a sign of bed bugs. When you find yourself in this situation where you wake up with blots of blood stains on your bed and all other signs of bed bug infestation—get your house inspected for bed bugs by pest control professionals.
4. If you find dark rust-colored pigments on your mattress
Bed bugs leave fecal stains in places they’ve nested and when these stains get smeared, it often leaves you with a dark spot and an unpleasant odor.
Prevent Your House From Bed Bugs
Now that you know what to look for and where to find them, it’s time to assess if you really have these pesky insects in your home or not. This time, we’re more careful when travelling and where we leave our belongings. And if you have all the signs listed above, it’s time to call pest control and seek out their advice. It’s always best to find a solution ahead of time so your suspected bed bug infestation won’t horribly spread any further and you can finally live in the comforts of your home, safe and bed bug-free!