You know you have bed bugs when the evidence is in and around the bed rather than only on your skin. Look for tiny dark spots, about the size of a full stop, along the mattress seams, the bed frame or the headboard, small rusty blood smears on the sheets or pillowcases, pale papery shed skins, clusters of cream coloured eggs, and the bugs themselves, which are flat, oval, reddish brown and about the size of an apple seed. Bites that appear overnight, often in a line or a small group on the neck, arms or shoulders, are what make most people suspicious, but bites alone do not confirm it.
The reason to look for physical evidence is that bites are an unreliable witness. Some people react badly, with raised and itchy welts, while others do not react at all, so two people can share an infested bed and only one of them has a mark to show for it. Find one or two of the signs above in the places described below and you almost certainly have an active infestation. Find bites and nothing else after a careful search, and the cause is more likely to be something different.
Start with the bed, not the bites
Bed bugs feed at night and spend the day packed into the tightest, darkest gaps they can find within a short crawl of where you sleep. That makes the bed itself the first place to search, and a slow, methodical search beats a quick glance every time.
Strip the bed and work with a bright torch. Check along the piping and seams of the mattress, around the label, the corners and the underside, then the divan or base, paying attention to the fabric underneath and the corners where it is stapled. After that, take the headboard off the wall if you can and look at the back of it, the bolts that fix it to the frame and every joint in the frame itself.
Bed bugs avoid open surfaces and settle in screw holes, joints and the narrow gap where a headboard meets the wall, so the joints of the bed frame and the back of the headboard deserve more attention than the top of the mattress. A mattress can look perfectly clean on top while the fixings a few inches away are lined with spotting. Running the edge of a bank card along a seam will push out anything sheltering in it.
What each sign is telling you
The British Pest Control Association's guidance on bed bugs sets out the evidence to look for, and each piece tells you something slightly different.
- Dark spots about 1mm across, like a dot from an ink pen, on the bed frame, upholstery or the underside of the mattress. These are droppings, made of digested blood, and a run of them along a seam or joint marks a hiding place.
- Blood smears on the sheets, pillowcases or headboard, usually where a bug that had just fed was crushed as someone turned over in the night.
- Shed skins, lighter brown and flaky, left behind as young bed bugs grow. Plenty of skins means the bugs have been breeding for a while.
- Eggs and empty eggshells, elongated and whitish cream, small but visible to the naked eye, usually tucked into the same gaps as the droppings.
- The bugs themselves. Adults are 4 to 6mm long, flat and brownish red, and they swell and darken after a feed. The young are tiny and pale, which is why they are so easily missed.
- A musty smell near the bed, which tends to become noticeable only once an infestation is well established.
Why bites on their own can mislead
The NHS describes bed bug bites as raised and itchy, often in a line or grouped together, and usually on skin left exposed while sleeping, such as the face, neck and arms. On lighter skin they tend to look red or pink. On darker skin they may look brown, red or purple and can be harder to see.
The difficulty is that plenty of other things bite or irritate the skin. Flea bites are usually found in groups below the knees, according to the NHS guidance on insect bites, so bites concentrated around the ankles and lower legs point towards fleas rather than bed bugs. Gnats, mites and skin reactions can all leave similar marks.
In practice, bed bugs often stay hidden for weeks or months before an infestation is properly identified, partly because the bites get blamed on something else and partly because some people do not react to them at all. If one person in a household wakes with fresh bites and the other does not, that is not evidence against bed bugs. It is exactly what you would expect, because everyone reacts to the bites differently. A careful inspection for physical evidence is more reliable than judging by the bites, because visual confirmation is what an accurate treatment depends on.
Where else they hide
The search should not stop at the bed, even when the bites only happen at night. Once numbers build, bed bugs spread into the furniture beside it and the room around it, including behind skirting boards, under loose wallpaper, behind picture frames and even inside plug sockets. A sofa or armchair that someone regularly falls asleep in can carry its own population. A bedside table, especially one with joints and drawer runners, deserves the same careful search as the frame.
How they got in
Bed bugs travel. They are carried into homes in luggage, bags, clothing and second hand furniture, and in a building of flats they can move from one home to the next through gaps in shared walls and floors. That is why they are most common in densely occupied buildings with a quick turnover of people, such as hotels, hostels, holiday accommodation and blocks of flats.
That pattern fits a lot of the property we cover. The coast from Hythe and Folkestone through to Dover has plenty of holiday lets, guest houses and older terraces divided into flats, and Canterbury has a large student population, much of it in shared houses. In a building of flats an infestation can come from a neighbouring property, so it is worth speaking to the neighbours before assuming the problem started and ended at your own front door.
Our own prevention advice starts with second hand furniture and travel. Inspect furniture before it comes into the home, keep luggage off the floor in hotels, and check beds after travelling. A bed frame, headboard or sofa bought cheaply online deserves the same torch and bank card search before it comes through the door, not after.
What not to do once you suspect them
A few very natural reactions make a bed bug problem harder to clear.
- Do not move to the sofa or the spare room. Bed bugs follow the person they feed on, so changing where you sleep simply starts a second infestation in a new room.
- Do not throw the mattress out straight away. Carrying it through the house can scatter bugs and eggs along the way, and the frame, headboard and furniture around it are usually affected too.
- Do not reach for a shop bought spray or fogger. The NHS points out that bed bugs are hard to find and may be resistant to some insecticides, and an amateur treatment that kills the few bugs it touches leaves the eggs and the hidden majority alone.
What does help is washing bedding and clothes from the bedroom on a hot wash, bagging them before carrying them through the house, vacuuming around the bed and emptying the vacuum into an outside bin straight away, and making a note of exactly where you found evidence. Clearing the clutter from under the bed and along the skirting is one of the most useful things you can do before a pest control visit, because it lets the treatment reach every gap.
What a proper inspection involves
A professional inspection follows the same logic as your own search but goes further. We check mattresses, bed frames, furniture and the nearby skirting boards for live insects, eggs and the other signs above, then confirm how far the infestation has spread before deciding on a treatment plan. Our bed bug treatment uses heat and professional chemical treatments designed to reach every life stage, including the eggs, and depending on how severe the problem is, more than one visit may be needed to clear it completely.
Speed matters because bed bugs are hardy. An empty spare room, or a rental property between tenants, can still hold a live problem that is simply waiting for someone to sleep there, and how long bed bugs can live without a meal is a large part of why they cannot be starved out by leaving a room empty. The same applies to holiday lets and guest houses, where bed bug control has to fit around the bookings as well as clear the rooms.
If you think you have bed bugs
If you have found dark spotting along a seam, a shed skin or a live bug, you have your answer, and the sooner it is treated the fewer rooms it will reach. If you only have bites and a nagging doubt, a careful search of the bed frame and headboard tonight will usually settle it one way or the other.
At Cinque Ports Pest Control we are a family run business based in Dymchurch, with more than twenty-five years in the trade behind us, and we treat bed bugs in family homes, rental properties, holiday accommodation and commercial premises across Romney Marsh, Ashford, Canterbury, Folkestone, Hythe and Dover. If you have found something and you are not sure what it is, get in touch and we will take a look.
Cinque Ports Pest Control Ltd is a family run business based in Dymchurch, Romney Marsh. We are BPCA members, Kent County Council Trading Standards approved, TrustMark registered, SafeContractor approved and CRRU supporters.
