Bedbugs in a Sofa Bed: Tower Hamlets

In a small flat, the sofa bed is often the only bed in the living room, the place a lodger or a housemate sleeps every night, or where a guest stays for a week. Any of those makes it a feeding spot. If bites are turning up on whoever sleeps there, the sofa bed is the first place to look.

Why a Sofa Bed Suits Them

An ordinary bed has a mattress, a frame and a headboard. A sofa bed has all of that folded into a box, plus a sofa built around it. There are hinges, springs, metal bars, a fabric or mesh deck the mattress lies on, and a dark cavity inside the base that nobody ever looks into. Each of those is a crevice close to where someone sleeps.

The mattress is usually thin and folds with the frame, so its seams and fold lines get pressed into the mechanism every day. The seat and back cushions sit on top, with their own zips and piping. It all adds up to a lot of hiding places in a small piece of furniture.

Where to Look

• The seams, piping and fold lines of the fold-out mattress.
• Where the fabric or mesh deck is stitched or clipped to the metal frame.
• Hinges, rivets and the joints where bars cross.
• Inside the base, once the mechanism is pulled out, along the timber and staples.
• Zips and piping on the seat and back cushions.
• Underneath the sofa, where the dust cover is stapled on.

Look for the insects themselves, small dark spots that smear when wiped, pale shed skins and tiny eggs in the tightest folds. A torch helps. Our London guide to places bedbugs hide that get missed covers the less obvious spots in the rest of the room.

If It Is Used Every Night

When a sofa bed is someone’s only bed, the advice is the same as for any bed. Keep sleeping on it until it has been treated. Moving to the floor or another room usually means the bugs follow, and then two places need treating.

Strip the bedding and hot-wash it. Leave the sofa bed where it is rather than dragging it out to the bin store, which spreads bugs across the flat and along the stairs, and leaves any in the floor and skirting behind. Hold off on a shop spray too; it pushes them deeper into the mechanism.

How a Sofa Bed Is Treated

With heat, the whole room is raised to a temperature bedbugs cannot survive and held while a thermal camera checks for cold spots. The sofa bed is opened up so the heat reaches into the base and the frame, and the cushions are spread out. It deals with the eggs as well, and it takes most of a day.

With chemical treatment, a residual insecticide goes into the frame joints, the base, the mattress seams and the surrounding skirting. Because it does not reliably kill eggs, it usually needs two visits, sometimes three, about 10 to 14 days apart. You can use it again once it is dry. The borough pages for heat and chemical treatment explain how each works in a flat.

Either way, leave the mechanism open and empty on the day, with nothing stored in the base. A sofa bed that is badly damaged or falling apart may be one we suggest replacing after treatment, but that is a decision to make with us, not before we arrive.

A Sofa Bed That Came Second-Hand

Sofa beds are often passed on when people move out, which makes them a common way for bedbugs to change homes. If you are taking one on, open it up fully and go through the list above in daylight before it comes through the door. The Mile End page covers furniture handed on at the end of a tenancy.

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