Bedbug Control Soho

Why a Performer in Digs Is Exposed Twice

Digs are somebody else's room, often somebody else's furniture, and a bed that has had a string of short-stay occupants before you. You cannot vouch for any of it. At the same time, your life is packed into a few bags that go wherever you go: the case under the bed, the rucksack you take to the theatre, the kit bag that sits on a dressing-room floor.

That combination is the risk. A bedbug that gets into a zipped case in a Soho bedroom can be unpacked in a new town next month, in a friend's spare room between contracts, or back home. The room matters, but your luggage matters more, because it is the part that moves.

What to Do the Night You Find Them

1. Catch one if you can. Sticky tape or a sealed bag is fine. Our guide on finding a bedbug on your pillow goes through the first night in detail.
2. Get your cases off the floor and away from the bed. Zip them shut. Nothing new goes into them until the clothes have been washed.
3. Hot-wash or tumble-dry what you have worn. Bag it first in the room, then take it to the machine or the launderette in the bag.
4. Tell whoever lets you the room, in writing. A text or email with the date and what you found is enough to start with.
5. Do not move to a friend's sofa with your bags. Sleeping somewhere else tends to take them with you rather than leave them behind.

Costumes, Kit and Instrument Cases

Most of what a performer carries can be washed or dried hot. The awkward things are the items that cannot: padded cases, soft-lined gig bags, shoes, make-up bags with a fabric lining. Keep those sealed in a bag and away from the bed until someone has looked at them. If a musical instrument lives near where you sleep, our guide to bedbugs in instruments and cases explains what to check and why instruments come out of a room before heat.

Anything that belongs to the production, such as a costume you take home to mend, is worth mentioning to the company manager too. They will want to know before it goes back into a shared rail.

Who Arranges Treatment of the Room

In digs you are usually a lodger or on a short let, so the room is not yours to book work on. Who arranges it and who pays depends on your agreement and on how the bedbugs got there, which is rarely clear-cut in a room with a turnover of guests. Report it in writing and keep a copy. We are pest controllers, not legal advisers, so we cannot settle that question for you.

When the room is booked in, heat treatment suits a short stay better than a course of visits, because it is usually done in one day and you are not left sleeping in a room waiting for a follow-up. Chemical treatment costs less but runs over a couple of weeks at least. Either way, treatments start from £220 and the figure is given on the phone first.

If you are leaving Soho before the room is treated, get your bags sorted before you go and check the next bed you sleep in. The Westminster page covers how bedbugs pass between the places people stay and the places they live.

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