How to Check Your Own Bed, Step by Step: Enfield

The trick is working methodically. People who find nothing have often looked in the right places in the wrong way: a glance at the sheet in daylight, then back to bed. Bedbugs sit in edges, seams and cracks, and they only show up when you look into those edges properly.

What You Need Before You Start

• A bright torch. A phone light works, but a separate torch frees a hand.
• An old plastic card, such as an expired loyalty card, to slide into seams and gaps.
• A small jar with a lid, or a strip of clear sticky tape, for anything you find.
• Your phone camera, and a coin to put beside anything you photograph for scale.
• White paper or a pale pillowcase to tap things over, so specks show up.

Take the bedding off first and put it straight in the washing machine on a hot wash. Check it as it comes off: small dark marks on the fitted sheet near where your body lies are worth noting.

The Ten Places, in Order

1. The top seam of the mattress, all the way round, running the card along the piping so anything tucked underneath is pushed out.
2. The mattress corners and label, where the fabric folds and the stitching doubles.
3. The underside of the mattress. Lift it or have someone help turn it; it is often busier than the top.
4. The top edges of the base, whether divan or slats, especially the corners where the mattress sat.
5. The fabric underneath a divan, and the join where it is stapled to the frame.
6. The bed frame joints: bolt holes, brackets and the ends of the slats.
7. The back of the headboard and the fixings to the wall or frame.
8. The bedside tables, including the drawer runners and the underside of the top.
9. The skirting and carpet edge nearest the bed, sliding the card into the gap.
10. Anything touching the bed: a chair with clothes on it, a bag on the floor, a picture frame just above the headboard.

What You Are Looking For

Live bedbugs are flat, oval and brown, from a pinhead when young to about the size of an apple pip as adults. They are more often found in groups than singly. You are just as likely to find the traces they leave behind.

• Dark spots, like dots from a felt-tip pen, that smear if you wipe them with a damp cotton bud.
• Pale, papery shells that look like empty bedbugs; these are the skins they shed.
• Tiny white eggs stuck into seams and cracks, about the size of a grain of salt.
• Small rusty stains on the sheet from a bug crushed while feeding.

If what you find does not match, it may be something else entirely. The London guide on whether it is bedbugs or something else covers the usual lookalikes.

What to Photograph and Keep

Good evidence saves a wasted visit and makes the phone call quicker. Take close, sharp photos in good light, with the coin in the shot. A photo of the whole bed, showing where on it the marks are, is useful as well.

• Any live bug, sealed in the jar or pressed under clear tape on a piece of card.
• The spotting on the seam, both close up and from a little further back.
• Shed skins and eggs if you can get them into focus.
• A note of the dates you noticed bites and which bed the person slept in.

Keep the jar or the taped card until someone has seen it. Please do not spray the bed with a shop product before an inspection; it scatters them and makes the next check harder.

If You Find Something, or Find Nothing

If you find bugs or clear spotting, ring 0800 955 1018 and we will talk through treatment for your house. If the signs are unclear, an inspection in Enfield starts from £120 and settles it. Finding nothing after a proper check is reassuring, but it is not final: early on there may be very few bugs, and they also hide beyond the bed. The guide to places that get missed is worth reading if bites continue.

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