Bedbugs in Ottoman and Storage Beds: Croydon

Ottoman beds with a lift-up base, and divans with drawers built into the sides, are popular because they hide a lot of storage in a small bedroom. The trouble is that the storage sits right under the mattress, and it is usually full. Spare duvets, winter clothes, shoes, suitcases and old paperwork all make hiding places, and nobody opens it very often.

Where to Look on an Ottoman or Divan

• The hinge and gas-strut fittings where the base lifts, and the screw holes behind them.
• The fabric lining of the storage well, especially where it is stapled to the frame.
• The corners of the base, and the join between the upholstered sides and the platform.
• The dust cover stretched across the underside of a divan, which is often torn.
• The runners, corners and backs of divan drawers.
• The headboard, its bolts and the gap between it and the wall.

Check in daylight or with a torch. You are looking for the bugs themselves, pale shed skins, tiny pale eggs, and the dark spotting they leave along seams and staples. Our London guide to where bedbugs hide that gets missed has more on what each sign looks like.

What Is Stored Inside Matters Too

Anything stored in the base has been lying in the dark directly under the sleeper, sometimes for months. Soft items are the concern: duvets, pillows, blankets, clothes and fabric bags. Hard items such as boxes of paperwork and shoes can hide bugs in their folds and corners as well.

Before any treatment, the storage well has to be emptied. Do it in the bedroom, bagging things as they come out, so nothing gets carried through the home loose.

1. Lay a pale sheet on the floor next to the bed and open the base or pull out the drawers.
2. Lift each item out and put it straight into a bag; tie the bag before it leaves the room.
3. Wash and dry textiles hot, as far as their labels allow.
4. Check hard items over the sheet, wipe them, and keep them bagged.
5. Leave the base open and empty for us, with nothing stacked around it.

If the base is full of things you do not want back, this is a good moment to decide. Bag them firmly before they go out of the room.

Treating the Bed Itself

With chemical treatment, the residue goes into the hinges, staples, corners and lining seams of the empty well, and the rest of the frame is treated as a normal bed would be. Because eggs are not reliably killed, the base needs emptying again before each follow-up visit, so keep what you took out bagged until the course is over.

With heat, the room is brought up to a temperature bedbugs cannot survive and held while a thermal camera checks for cold spots. A closed storage base packed with bedding insulates what is inside, which is one reason it has to be empty and open on the day. The heat treatment page explains how the day runs in local houses, and the chemical treatment page the course of visits.

Should the Storage Bed Go?

Usually not. A storage bed can be treated like any other, and taking one apart and carrying it out through the house spreads bugs along the landing and the stairs. If the lining is badly torn or the base is damaged, ask us on the day, and do not move anything out before treatment unless we advise it.

Once the treatment is finished, it is worth changing what the base holds for a while. Keeping it empty, or storing things in sealed plastic boxes rather than fabric bags, makes it much easier to check. The chests of drawers guide covers the other furniture beside the bed, and the Croydon page explains how to stop a treatment having to be repeated.

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