Can Bedbugs Live in Drawers and Chests of Drawers in Croydon?

A bedbug wants a tight, dark gap close to where someone sleeps. A bedside cabinet is usually within arm’s reach of the pillow, and a chest of drawers is rarely more than a few steps from the bed. Neither is their first choice, but once the mattress seams and the bed frame are occupied, drawer units are the natural next place to look.

Where They Sit in the Furniture

The drawers themselves are open boxes, and a bug sitting on a flat drawer base is exposed. What they prefer is the structure around them:

• The joints at the corners of each drawer, especially dovetails and stapled corners in flat-pack units.
• The runners and the channels they slide in, and the gap where a drawer base sits in its groove.
• Screw holes, cam fittings and the edges of a hardboard back panel.
• The underside of the top, and the space between the bottom drawer and the floor.
• Handles fixed through the drawer front, where there is a small gap behind the plate.

Older solid-wood chests have more cracks and loose joints than new flat-pack ones, but flat-pack units have hollow edges and unfinished board where they are cut. Neither is immune.

What About the Clothes Inside?

Folded clothes in a closed drawer are less likely to hold bedbugs than the furniture around them, but it happens, particularly in the top drawer of a bedside cabinet where nightwear, socks and phone chargers go in and out every day. Anything that goes from the bed into a drawer can carry a bug with it.

For that reason we treat the contents of drawers near an affected bed as possibly carrying them. That does not mean throwing them away. It means washing and drying them hot, then keeping them bagged until the room is finished.

What to Empty Before Each Treatment

What we ask for depends on the route you have chosen, and we confirm it when you book. As a rule:

1. Empty the bedside drawers completely, and any chest of drawers in the affected room.
2. Bag the contents in the room, tie the bags, and carry them straight to the washing machine rather than tipping them out on another bed.
3. Wash everything washable on the hottest setting the label allows, then dry it hot if the fabric will take it.
4. Keep washed items sealed in clean bags until we tell you the room is done.
5. Leave the empty drawers in place, or pulled out and stood next to the unit, so the frame and runners can be treated.
6. For a chemical course, do the same again before the follow-up visit.

Non-washable things such as paperwork, jewellery boxes and electronics should be checked, wiped and bagged. For heat treatment, some of them may need to come out of the room altogether; the heat preparation guide covers what goes and what stays.

How Treatment Deals With the Furniture

With chemical treatment, the residue goes into the joints, runners and back panel of an emptied unit, which is why it has to be empty and why the drawers have to come out. With heat, the whole room is raised to a temperature bedbugs cannot survive, and a closed, packed chest of drawers is one of the places a thermal camera shows warming slowly. Opening it up lets the heat in.

Neither route needs the furniture thrown out. Carrying a chest of drawers down the stairs and out to the street before it is treated usually spreads bugs along the way. If a unit is falling apart, ask us on the day whether it is worth keeping. The chemical treatment page and the heat treatment page explain each route for homes in the borough.

The Wardrobe Question

A wardrobe on the far side of the room is less likely to be involved than the bedside cabinet, but clothes that were worn in bed or dropped on the floor may have gone in there. Tell us what furniture is in the room and how close it sits to the bed. If you are not sure how far things have gone, the inspections page explains what we look at, and the storage beds guide covers the other furniture that people often forget to open.

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