How Many Rooms Need Treating for Bed Bugs?

Start With Where People Sleep

Not where bites appeared — where people sleep. Bed bugs feed at night on someone lying still, then return to harbourage within a few feet. A bite noticed at work came from a bed.

List every room somebody sleeps in, including a sofa that gets slept on and a spare room that had a visitor two months ago.

Then Check Each One, in This Order

Strip the bed. Look along the piping seam of the mattress, all the way round. Then the joints of the frame, particularly where a slat meets the rail and around any screw hole. Then the headboard, and the wall behind it. Then the bedside furniture. Then the skirting nearest the bed.

You are looking for dark spotting like a fine felt-tip dot, shed skins that look like empty translucent shells, and live insects — flat, oval, reddish-brown, about the size of an apple pip when fed.

What a Clear Room Actually Looks Like

Nothing on the seam, nothing in the frame joints, nothing behind the headboard and nobody being bitten in it. That is a room you can leave out of the count.

A room where somebody sleeps and is being bitten but you cannot find anything is NOT clear — it means you have not found it yet, and it should be inspected on the first visit.

Why Under-Counting Costs More

The first room is £220 and each additional room is £120. Adding a room on the day costs £120. Discovering it three weeks later costs £220 again, because the first-room price applies to a fresh job.

So if you are genuinely unsure about a second room, include it or at least have it looked at on the first visit. Looking costs nothing.

The Thing That Creates Extra Rooms

Moving. Someone gets bitten, moves to the spare room or the sofa, and takes the infestation with them. That is how a one-room job becomes a two-room job, and it happens between the phone call and the visit more often than you would think.

Stay where you are. It feels wrong and it is the right thing to do.