Can Bed Bugs Spread Between Rooms?

On Their Own, They Are Slow

A bed bug walks at roughly the pace of an ant and it has no particular reason to leave a good harbourage next to a host. Movement away from the bed happens for two reasons: the harbourages nearby have filled up, or the host has moved and it is following.

That takes months rather than days, and it leaves a readable trail - mattress, then frame, then divan, then bedside furniture, then the skirting line. An infestation with evidence only at the mattress has almost certainly not left the bed.

With Help, They Are Fast

Almost every case of a second infested room was created by somebody in the house, in good faith, within a day or two of finding the first.

• Moving to another bedroom to sleep. The big one. Bed bugs locate a host by exhaled carbon dioxide and by warmth - move, and over the following weeks they work towards the new room, while anything you carry goes tonight
• Bagging things up and carrying them through the house. Bedding and clothing taken to the landing, the spare room or the garage
• Taking furniture out. A mattress or frame carried down the stairs sheds along the route
• Sleeping on the sofa. The quiet one. A sofa in nightly use becomes a second harbourage, and it is harder to treat than a bed
• Swapping rooms between children, or moving a mattress from one room to another

Between Flats and Between Households

In a purpose-built or converted block, bed bugs can travel through gaps around pipework, along cable runs, through the void behind a shared partition and under a poorly sealed door. It is real, and it is slower than people fear - usually months rather than days.

The faster route between households is the same as within a house: belongings. A chair passed to a neighbour, a shared laundry, a bag carried between flats.

Where a block or an HMO is treated one unit at a time over several months, the same infestation can circulate around it indefinitely. The version that works inspects the sleeping rooms together, whatever is then treated.

What To Do Instead, In Order

1. Stop. Move nothing and spray nothing
2. Confirm what you have - spotting, cast skins, eggs, a live insect
3. Photograph what you found, where you found it
4. Strip the bedding into a bag in the room, then take it straight to a hot wash and a hot tumble dry
5. Keep sleeping in the same room
6. Call, and say what you found and where

If You Have Already Moved Things

Most people have by the time they ring, and it is not a disaster. What it changes is the scope of the inspection: if bags went to the spare room, the spare room needs looking at; if somebody has been sleeping downstairs, the sofa does.

So say what you have done. It is not an admission of anything, and an inspection that knows where things were carried is looking in the right places.