6 Home Remedies to Get Rid of Bed Bugs [Incl. Recipes] (2024)

Bed bugs can come from several different places and are rarely a reflection of housekeeping skills. Here are some home remedies for bed bugs. What do you do?

You take care of your house. You vacuum the rugs, clean the windows, and keep the bathrooms spotless. Guests visit, and they feel like a cleaning service makes daily trips to your house. Now imagine one morning you wake up to find that you have tiny bite marks on your body.

Upon further inspection, you realize that there are small bugs in your bed. That’s right. Bed bugs. Your first instinct might be to think that your house isn’t clean enough, but that may not be the case.

How Do People Get Bed Bugs?

Like most bugs, bed bugs come from outside the house. If you live in an apartment or any other shared living situation and have a bed bug infestation, it could be that they came from an adjoining apartment through cracks in the floors and walls.

Pesticide foggers like bug bombs don’t get rid of bed bugs, but instead, displace them – they go searching for a new home. For that reason, you want to avoid using bug bombs to deal with the infestation.

If it makes you feel any better, if you live in a shared housing situation, it’s possible that your infestation is the result of one of your neighbors bug-bombing an infestation.

Introducing used furniture to your house is another way bed bugs find their way inside. Be wary of used furniture, especially upholstery. Check and treat any pieces of furniture carefully before bringing them into the house. Check used clothing and books as well.

Finally, if you stay somewhere with bed bugs, they can also hitch a ride on you, your family, or your guests, either via your clothing or in your luggage.

How to Detect Bed Bugs

Bites on your skin are the first sign of a bed bug infestation. If you have unexplained bug bites, especially first thing in the morning, you might want to start checking around for other signs of an infestation.

Check your mattress for the visual signs of bed bugs. If you have them, you may see red or rust-colored stains, indicating crushed bed bugs.

You might also see tiny black dots, which are bed bug excrement, and egg shells (around 1mm, a pale yellow color) resulting from the bed bugs reproducing. Finally, you may see the bugs themselves walking around.

Make sure you check every surface down to the box spring, and anything surrounding the bed as well. Check curtains, baseboards, behind wallpaper, and even under the carpet.

Bed bugs prefer fabric and wood to plastic and metal, so check any wooden furniture as well. If you suspect you have bed bugs, call a professional exterminator to confirm it for you.

Bed Bugs and Your Health

Bed bugs bite because they live on blood, either human or animal blood. They feed on your blood for about ten minutes, then swell and turn red. Their bites are painless but can become itchy, but unlike mosquitos, they are harmless and do not transmit diseases.

However, if you scratch the bites, you can cause an infection. What is one characteristic of bed bug bites?

They are numerous, and they have a tendency to appear in straight rows. If you see multiple bites arranged in a straight line, there’s a good chance you’re looking at bed bug bites.

How to Get Rid of Bed Bugs

The best way to get rid of a bed bug infestation is to call an exterminator. They’ve dealt with bed bugs before and know how to do a thorough enough job to keep them from returning.

An exterminator is your best bet, just to make sure you take care of the problem completely. However, there are some things you can do at home to get rid of bed bugs and to supplement a professional.

Treating an Infestation

Natural ways to deal with bed bugs include using hot water to wash all clothes, linens, and anything fabric that may have contacted the bugs. Heat will kill anything hiding in your linens. Use a dryer to dry everything as well, because a dryer will hit the bugs with a double dose of heat.

Just make sure you pay attention to the tags on the fabric, as your linens may be dry clean only. Dry cleaning can also kill bed bugs, but make sure you inform the dry cleaner of the possible infestation.

Once you’ve given your bedding the heat treatment, follow up by vacuuming all areas of the infested room(s). Vacuuming is ideal for removing bed bugs from the nooks and crannies in which they may be hiding.

Use a brush to loosen all bugs and eggs. Make sure you clean out your vacuum thoroughly afterward and dispose of any vacuum bags outside of the house. Use a steamer on things like your mattress and box spring. Steam will take care of the remaining eggs.

Finally, cover your mattress, box spring, and pillow in a completely closed bug-proof cover. Sealing up your bedding with a cover ensures that anything left cannot escape or feed and will eventually starve. Starvation can take up to a year, however.

Prevention

Whether you’re looking to prevent bed bugs from re-infesting a room or looking to avoid one before it happens, there are a couple of things you can do. The best solution for bed bugs is to start by making sure that your house is spotless.

Messy rooms and improperly stored items create a lot of places for bed bugs to hide, so the less attractive your home to bed bugs, the less likely you are to experience an infestation.

Remove bridges from the floor to the bed. Keep bed bugs out of bed by keeping blankets from dragging the floor, and don’t use the bed as storage for anything.

Bed bug interceptors are relatively inexpensive and are placed under the feet of the bed, preventing bed bugs from reaching the legs and climbing to the bedding. Consider using them. Finally, prevention is ongoing. Clean often, checking for signs of a recurrence.

The earlier you catch bed bugs, the easier they are to clean out. Inspect all used items that you introduce to the house. When staying in a new place, check that bed for bugs. When returning from a trip, clean everything you took, including your luggage.

Does peppermint oil repel bed bugs? Yes, they don’t like the smell. Add a few drops of peppermint oil to a spray bottle of water and spritz it anywhere you think bed bugs may hide to keep them away.

Home Remedies for Bed Bugs

The best ways to get rid of bed bugs are pesticides, heat treatment, and thorough cleaning, but there are a few home remedies that might help.

You might have ingredients for this simple homemade bed bug repellent right in your kitchen. The strong smells of cayenne, ginger, and oregano repel bed bugs and other insects, too.

If you know where the bed bugs are entering the room, use a mixture of cayenne pepper, ginger, and oregano oil to keep them away.

Mix the ingredients in water, strain it, and use a spray bottle to apply the solution at entry points. Make spraying a regular habit, and you’ll prevent the bugs from entering. To keep other insects from getting into your home, spray doorways and windowsills.

Sleep Well

If you have bed bugs or are just worried about preventing an infestation, rest easy — there are plenty of natural bed bug repellents and ways to kill bed bugs available. Bed bugs can happen to anyone and even if you keep a tidy home, random variables, like your neighbor setting off a bug bomb next door, mean that an infestation can happen anytime.

In this article, you learned how to detect bed bugs, as well as a few home remedies for bed bugs, including how to repel bed bugs naturally.

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