Bedbug Control Welling

Why the Living Room Gets Them

The usual reasons are simple. A relative has moved into the front room on a sofa bed. Someone with a bad back sleeps in the recliner. A person bitten upstairs has started sleeping on the sofa to get away from it. In each case there is now a host in the same place for hours every night, and the bedbugs follow.

If you moved downstairs to escape bites, move back. The bedroom keeps them in one place; the sofa gives them a second room. Our guide on sleeping somewhere else goes into why.

Where They Hide in Living Room Furniture

Upholstered furniture has far more hiding places than a bed, which is what makes it awkward:

• The folding mechanism and the thin mattress of a sofa bed
• The hinges, springs and footrest joints of a recliner
• The underside hessian and the staples holding it on
• The seams and piping of cushions and the gap where they meet the arms
• Skirtings and carpet edges nearest where someone lies down

Look with a torch along each of those. Spotting and shed skins are more telling than the bugs themselves. For the places people miss, see the London guide on where bedbugs hide that gets missed.

Treating Sofas and Recliners

A sofa can usually be treated rather than thrown out, and putting one out on the street before treatment can carry bedbugs through the hall on the way. Chemical treatment reaches seams, joints and the frame, but a recliner mechanism has a lot of places a spray cannot get into, and the follow-up visit matters more than usual.

Heat treatment takes the whole piece to a temperature bedbugs cannot survive, including the inside of the padding, and is often the better route for heavy upholstered furniture. Electric recliners need a word first, because some motors and control boxes are on the heat-sensitive list.

Treating the Bedroom and the Lounge Together

If someone was bitten upstairs before moving down, both rooms need treating in the same course. Doing the living room alone leaves the bed that started it; doing the bedroom alone leaves the sofa to reinfest it. Tell us about every place anyone in the house in Welling has slept in the past month, and we will quote for a Welling living room and bedroom together if both need it.

For chemical, the living room has to be cleared in the same way as a bedroom: cushions off, throws and loose covers washed hot and bagged, and the floor around the sofa emptied so we can get to the skirtings behind it. For heat, remote controls, games consoles and anything with a battery are worth talking through with us first. If a relative is sleeping in the front room because they cannot manage the stairs, tell us, so the day can be planned around them. Other rooms and house types in the borough are covered from the Bexley page.

← Bedbug Control Bexley · Bedbug Control London