Where Do Bed Bugs Hide in a Bedroom?

The Two Rules

Rule one: touch on both sides. A bed bug wants a gap tight enough that its back and its belly are both against something. A seam, a fold, a joint, a screw hole, the space behind a strip of trim. An open surface, however dark, is of no interest at all.

Rule two: close to the host. They travel to feed and they would rather travel a short way. The first harbourage in a room is almost always within a couple of feet of where somebody's head rests.

Every place on this page is just those two rules applied to furniture.

In Order of Likelihood

The bed itself

• Mattress piping and seams, at the head end first
• Under mattress labels, and inside the handle recesses
• The mattress underside, particularly the edges
• The stapled fabric around the top face of a divan base
• Inside divan drawers - the backs, the runners and the empty recesses
• The underside of the base, including corner blocks and castor housings
• Frame joints, bolt recesses, cam locks and slat housings
• Behind a headboard, especially one fixed to the wall
• The seams and button recesses of a padded or buttoned headboard

Within reach of the bed

• Bedside cabinets - drawer backs, runners and the empty recess behind
• A chest of drawers standing against the bed wall
• An armchair used in the evening, at its seams and underside
• Books, a lamp base or a phone charger left on the bedside table

The perimeter

• The skirting line and the carpet edge on the wall the bed stands against
• Under a loose corner of skirting, or behind the carpet gripper
• Socket and switch faces on that wall
• Behind pictures, mirrors and wall lights above the bed
• Curtain hems and the fixings of a wall-mounted blind, in a long-running case

Where They Are Not

Worth knowing, because a great deal of effort gets spent in the wrong places.

• Deep in the carpet pile. That is flea behaviour. Bed bugs use the carpet edge and the gripper, not the middle of the floor
• On open walls and ceilings. They cross them; they do not live on them
• In your hair or on your body. They feed and leave. They do not live on a host the way lice do
• All over the house from the start. Left alone they extend from the bed outward slowly. It is people who move them a whole room at a time

How the Map Changes as It Goes On

1. Early. Mattress seams and piping at the head end, and nothing else
2. Established. The frame, the divan and the headboard as well
3. Long-running. Bedside furniture, then the skirting and carpet edge on the bed wall
4. Very long-running, or somebody moved. A second room, or a sofa