How Can You Make Your Home Less Attractive to Spiders?

One: Change the Outside Lighting

The single biggest factor. A white light left on overnight near a door or window pulls flying insects to the wall from a considerable distance, and spiders set up where the food arrives.

Site it away from the door, use a warmer-toned bulb, or run it off a movement sensor rather than dusk-to-dawn. Draw curtains and blinds in rooms facing the worst corners. This costs nothing and does more than any treatment.

Two: Remove Webs and Egg Sacs Regularly

Brush out ceiling corners, window reveals, door frames, the eaves line, and the roof lines of sheds and garages. Outside as well as in.

The egg sacs are the point. Removing one in late autumn removes several hundred spiderlings from the following spring, and almost nobody does it. This is the highest-value ten minutes in the whole list after the lighting.

Three: Deal With the Clutter and the Planting

Garages, sheds and cellars generate more genuine spider complaints than any room in the house. Lift stored items off the floor, clear boxes away from walls, and reduce the number of undisturbed corners.

Outside, cut back ivy, shrubs and climbers that touch the building — they are both harbourage and a bridge to the windows. Move log piles and bins away from doorways.

Four: Close the Easy Routes In

Brush strips on external doors, particularly a garage or utility door. Mesh on air bricks and vents. Repairing gaps around old window frames. None of it makes a house spider-proof, and nobody honest will tell you otherwise, but it reduces the traffic.

Fixing damp and standing water helps too, because it reduces the midges and gnats that feed them.

And the Things That Do Not Work

Conkers. Essential oils and peppermint sprays. Ultrasonic plug-ins. Keeping the house spotless, which makes very little difference because spiders eat insects rather than crumbs.

If any of those worked we would recommend them — they would be cheaper for you and easier for us. Where there is a genuine year-round problem in the same place, treatment is £180 for the first room and £60 for each additional one. And for the two or three weeks of big wandering males in September, the honest answer stays the same: it passes on its own.