What Colour Are Bedbugs in Hackney?

The Short Answer

An adult bedbug that has not fed for a while is a flat, oval, mid to reddish brown, often compared to the colour of an apple seed. Young bedbugs are much paler, from almost clear to a light straw. After any bedbug feeds, it turns redder and darker, then fades back to brown over the following days.

Eggs and Newly Hatched Nymphs

Eggs are pearly white or cream and about the size of a pinhead. They are stuck into seams and cracks and often sit in small groups. You are more likely to see them with a torch and a magnifying glass than by chance.

A nymph that has just hatched is tiny and so pale it is almost see-through. That makes it very hard to spot on a white sheet or a light mattress. People often only notice one when it has fed, because the blood in its gut shows through as a bright red dot.

Older Nymphs and Adults

With every moult the nymph grows darker, moving through light tan towards the brown of an adult. Adults are the easiest to recognise: flat when hungry, about the size of an apple seed, with no wings and a slightly banded look across the back.

The stages and the moults between them are explained in the life cycle of a bedbug. Seeing several sizes and shades together usually means they have been breeding for a while.

Red After Feeding

A bedbug that has just fed looks quite different. The body swells and lengthens, and the colour shifts to a deep, bright red. Over the next few days, as the meal is digested, it darkens to a brownish red and then back towards plain brown, and the body flattens again.

The dark spotting found on mattresses and frames comes from this digestion. The marks look like dots from a black or dark brown felt pen and smear if you rub them with a damp cloth. They are often easier to find than the bugs themselves.

Why Colour Confuses People

• A pale nymph on a pale sheet can be missed, while a dark adult on a dark headboard can too.
• A freshly fed bug looks so different from a hungry one that people assume they have two kinds of insect.
• Several brown household insects look similar at a glance, including carpet beetles and small cockroaches.
• Shed skins are the same shape as a bug but hollow and pale, which can look like a dead or dried-out one.

Lighting plays a part as well. Under a warm bedside lamp a brown adult can look almost black, and under a phone torch a pale nymph can seem to vanish against the fabric. If you are trying to judge colour, move the bug onto a sheet of white paper in daylight and look again.

Shape and where you found it tell you more than colour. For a proper side-by-side of the common lookalikes, see our London guide bedbugs or something else. For the spots that get overlooked, see where bedbugs hide that get missed.

If You Are Still Not Sure

Catch one on clear tape or in a sealed jar and keep it. A clear photo in good light helps too. If you would rather have someone look at the bed and the room, a bedbug inspection starts from £120 and confirms what you have before anyone pays for treatment. The Hackney bedbug page explains what happens after that.

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