Do You Need to Throw Away Your Mattress After Finding Bed Bugs?

Why It Usually Does Not Help

The mattress is rarely the whole population. Bugs harbour in the frame joints, behind the headboard, in the divan base, in the bedside furniture and in the skirting. Removing the mattress removes one harbourage and leaves the rest.

A new mattress in an untreated room is reinfested within days to weeks. People then conclude that the new mattress "came with bed bugs", which is almost never what happened.

And It Can Make It Worse

Dragging an infested mattress through the house and down a stairwell drops bugs along the route — the landing carpet, the hall, the stairs, and in a block, the communal corridor and lift. That is how one room becomes two, and how one flat becomes several.

It also removes the main harbourage immediately before treatment, which scatters the population outwards into the room rather than keeping it concentrated where it can be dealt with.

What Treatment Does to a Mattress

It is treated in place. Seams, piping, label, underside and the base beneath it, along with the frame and everything around it. That is the standard job, and it is what the £220 for the first room covers.

An encasement — a zipped, bed-bug-proof mattress cover — is often worth adding afterwards. It traps anything remaining inside, stops new harbourage forming in the seams and makes future inspection straightforward.

When It Genuinely Does Need Replacing

When it is physically damaged — split seams, torn ticking, open holes into the interior — so treatment cannot reach where the bugs are. When it is old enough that you were going to replace it anyway. And occasionally in a very heavy long-standing infestation, where we will say so.

That is a judgement made after inspection, not before it. Nobody should be telling you to buy a bed over the phone.

If You Do Have to Get Rid of It

Wrap it completely in plastic and tape it closed before it leaves the room, so nothing falls off in transit. Mark it clearly so nobody takes it. Do not leave it in a communal area or on a landing.

And do not bring the replacement in until the treatment is complete. Buying the new bed first is how people pay twice.