Can Bedbugs Live in Coats and Cloakrooms in City of London?

Carrier, Not Home

Bedbugs live near where people sleep, because they feed at night on someone who is lying still. A coat is not that place. What it can be is transport: an insect that crawled into a collar or a pocket at home or in a hotel can be carried somewhere else and crawl out, or the other way round.

That is why a coat matters more than the clothes you wear during the day. It hangs in wardrobes and hallways, it gets thrown over chairs, and it spends the day touching other people's coats.

Where on a Coat to Look

• Under the collar and along the collar seam.
• Inside pockets, especially the corners and any inner zipped pocket.
• The lining seams, cuffs and the hem.
• Any hood, fur trim or quilted panel, where stitching makes small channels.

Use a torch. You are looking for small flat brown insects, tiny pale eggs stuck in seams, or specks of dark spotting. On a busy dark coat they are easy to miss, which is why cleaning it is more reliable than checking it.

Cleaning a Coat Properly

A hot tumble dryer cycle, if the label allows, is the most effective thing you can do at home, because heat reaches every seam at once. Washing first is fine but the drying does the work.

Wool, down and tailored coats are harder. Some can go to a dry cleaner; tell them why. Others can be sealed in a bag and dealt with during a heat treatment of the room, or frozen if it is small enough and you follow our guide to cold and bedbugs. Until then, keep it bagged and away from bedrooms.

Shared Rails and Office Coat Stores

A crowded rail is where a bedbug is most likely to move from one coat to another. Most of the time there is nothing on it at all. When there is, it is usually a single insect carried in, and the right response is to find out rather than empty the rail into the bin.

• Give people space: fewer coats per hook, and not crushed together.
• Lockers or individual hooks are better than one long pile.
• Keep coats off upholstered seating in reception and break-out areas.
• Have the store included when soft seating nearby is inspected.

If something is found, the London guide on bedbugs in the workplace covers how to tell staff, and our commercial page for the area covers the building itself.

Cloakrooms at Venues and Events

Venues with a staffed cloakroom see coats from hundreds of homes in an evening. The coats spend a few hours there and leave, so the cloakroom rarely becomes a place bedbugs live. The things that help are the same: keep rails uncrowded, check the fabric fittings and any soft seating in the space, and if staff find an insect, keep it for identification.

If you are a guest who thinks they picked something up, treat the coat as above and watch your own bed for a few weeks. An inspection from £120 settles it if you find anything you cannot identify.

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