How to Kill Bed Bugs at Home

There is, unfortunately, truth to the old bedtime saying about not letting the bed bugs bite. The bed bug is a parasite that lives in dark, hidden nesting and bedding areas. It comes out to feed on the blood of its hosts, including birds, bats, dogs, cats and humans. Exposure to repeated bed bug bites may cause skin lesions and allergic reactions, so getting rid of them in your home is important.

Vacuum

Steamer

Mineral oil

Sticky tape

Verify that you have bed bugs in your home. To effectively kill and eliminate bed bugs in your home, you must correctly identify bed bugs and ensure that the bugs you see do not belong to another class of insects. Look around your bed in tiny crevices and cracks where the bugs hide during the day. Seek out tiny oval shaped insects with flat bodies, which appear in colors ranging from light tan to deep browns and burnt oranges.

Determine where bed bugs reside inside your home. Knowing the location of a bed bug infestation allows you to properly eliminate the bugs. You do not want to focus your efforts on the bedroom if the bed bugs have infested the furniture in your living room. Look for tiny poppy seed-sized insects crawling on furniture late in the evening or at night. Adult bed bugs will present as larger insects, generally measuring a quarter-inch long.

Thoroughly vacuum any areas where you see bed bugs or suspect a bed bug infestation. While vacuuming will not kill the bed bugs, vacuuming allows you to remove the bugs from the area. Dispose of them outdoors away from inhabited buildings or into a plastic bag that you can immediately close to suffocate the bugs. Remember to run the vacuum over all surfaces in an infested area, including the walls, around electrical outlets and in tiny cracks in the floor and walls.

Sweat the bed bugs out. Bed bugs cannot tolerate heat and will perish easily when exposed to high temperatures. Use a steamer or device for steaming, such as a steaming iron or a steam cleaner to exterminate bud bugs hiding in hard to reach places. Run the steamer all over your walls, floors and furniture; use the steamer sparingly around sensitive objects and surfaces like suede couches and wallpaper.

Vacuum the areas again to take extra precaution against bed bugs that attempted to flee when you ran the steam over the areas. Dispose of the vacuum bags as described in Step 3.

Prevent the return of bed bugs by coating the legs of your bed with mineral oil to prevent the bugs from climbing back onto your bed. You also can place tape, sticky-side-up around bed posts to capture the bugs.

Try other methods of eliminating bed bugs. Such methods include covering mattresses in plastic to suffocate the bugs and spraying insecticides approved to kill bed bugs.