Can Bedbugs Live in Leather Furniture in Islington?

A bedbug wants a tight, dark crack close to where someone rests. Smooth leather offers none of that: it is hard for them to grip and there is nowhere to hide on it. So you will rarely find them sitting out on the seat of a leather sofa. What you have to think about is everything that is not the smooth part.

Where They Hide on Leather Pieces

• Stitched seams and piping, especially where two panels meet at a corner.
• Deep buttoning on a chesterfield-style sofa or a headboard, where the leather folds into a pocket.
• The gap between the seat cushion and the back or arms.
• The fabric lining underneath the sofa, and the staples holding it on.
• The wooden or metal frame, its joints and the feet.
• The slats, joints and headboard fixings of a leather bed.

Faux leather and bonded leather are the same in this respect. The finish is smooth; the construction underneath is not.

Checking a Leather Sofa

1. Take the seat cushions off and look along the seams in good light, with a torch held low so small things cast a shadow.
2. Run a card or a thin blade along the stitching and into the buttoning to tease out anything tucked in.
3. Look for dark spots like ink dots, pale shed skins and tiny cream eggs, as well as the bugs themselves.
4. Tip the sofa carefully and check the lining underneath, the frame corners and the feet.
5. Put anything you catch in a jar or on sticky tape so it can be identified.

If you find spotting only on the bed and none on the sofa, that is useful to know when you ring. If you are not sure what you are looking at, the bedbugs or something else guide helps you rule other insects in or out.

How We Treat Leather

With chemical treatment, the product goes into the seams, joints, buttoning and frame, the places they actually use, rather than being sprayed across the face of the leather. We tell you on the day when it can be sat on again, and you should follow that.

Heat treats the sofa or bed along with the rest of the room, reaching into the frame and padding. Leather usually comes through a heat treatment without harm, but some finishes, very old hides and pieces with vinyl or plastic parts are more sensitive. Tell us about any piece you are worried about before the day, and we will say whether it stays in the room or needs a different approach. The Islington heat treatment page covers what else comes out of the room first.

Do Not Throw It Out Yet

A leather sofa is expensive and, in a small flat, often the main piece of furniture in the room. The urge to get it out of the building is understandable. Carrying it through a hallway and down the stairs is one of the more reliable ways to spread bedbugs to the rest of the house, and the room it leaves still has them in the skirtings. Leave it where it is unless we have advised otherwise.

When the Sofa Is Also the Bed

In a studio or a small flat, a leather sofa bed or a sofa that someone sleeps on every night is treated like a bed, because that is what it is to a bedbug. Check the mechanism and the mattress on a pull-out as well as the leather. The Islington page covers preparing a compact home where the bed and the living room share a space.

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