Bed Bugs in the Living Room Bed bugs, despite their name, can also be found in living room furniture. Known for being skilled hitchhikers, these bugs can catch a ride on clothing or personal items, traveling from places like schools and hotels right into living rooms.
Bed bugs are opportunists. They'll hitch a ride home with you on your coat, clothing, or luggage and quickly infest not just your bedroom, but your whole house. They will take up residence anywhere that there is someone to feed on.
Bedbugs—unlike their name indicates—don't remain hidden away in the bed but tend to migrate around from luggage, purses, clothes, and even on couches and other furniture.
You can tell if furniture has bed bugs by looking for droppings near or on the furniture. Bed bug feces resemble small black dots and they are often found underneath tables or near seams. The droppings may also be found inside nooks and crannies in your furniture.
The high temperature of steam 212°F (100°C) immediately kills bed bugs. Apply steam slowly to the folds and tufts of mattresses, along with sofa seams, bed frames, and corners or edges where bed bugs may be hiding. Be careful though, steam may damage some finishes and keep steam away from electricity.
Ultimately, it can take mere minutes to travel from room-to-room, with infestations growing in a matter of weeks or months. Every day, bed bugs can lay between one and 12 eggs, and anywhere from 200 to 500 eggs in a lifetime.
If there was absolutely no host available from which to feed on their blood, a young bed bug could die as quickly as within several weeks, while an adult bed bug could survive as long as 4.5 months under optimal conditions of heat and humidity before dying of starvation1.
So if you notice a bed bug infestation in one room of your house, if left untreated they are likely to spread to other bedrooms, living rooms, and other rooms in your house.
Wash everything on a high temperature or sanitary cycle for at least 30 minutes. Placing everything in the dryer on the hottest setting for 30 minutes will also kill bed bugs and larvae. Immediately after you're finished putting clothing in the washer, tie up and throw out the empty garbage bag in an outdoor trash bin.
Light Bed Bug Infestation
Minimal fecal staining (small black stains in areas of travel, feeding, and harborage). Fecal stains will be anywhere the bed bugs hide or travel and can be used to detect hot spots. Minimal cast skins (exuviae are the skins shed during the molting process).
“People may have bed bugs and not know it because many people have no physical reaction to bed bug bites,” Dr. Harrison says. “That's why it's important for people everywhere to inspect for bed bugs regularly.”
Myth: Bed bugs live in dirty places. Reality: Bed bugs are not attracted to dirt and grime; they are attracted to warmth, blood and carbon dioxide. However, clutter offers more hiding spots.
To lure bed bugs out of their hiding spots, you can use a steamer or a hairdryer to heat areas such as mattresses. Neither of these is hot enough to kill the bed bugs, but it can trick them into thinking a human host is near. You can also keep an eye out at night to locate their nests when they are most active.
Mattresses and pillows make potential habitats for bed bugs. Pillows may also be host to bed bug eggs, making them a potential point of bed bug infestations. A possible sign that bed bugs have infested pillows may be the appearance of bites.
Finding one bed bug in a home is not necessarily a sign that an infestation is present. If you found a single bed bug, killed it, and can't find another after a thorough search, wait for a few days. Bed bugs don't take time off; if there are more, they will show themselves. Be vigilant.
Examine pillows and bed sheets for fecal marks and bloodstains. Remove bed sheets and check around the edges and seams of your mattress for bed bugs, shell casings, and eggs. Remove the mattress and use your flashlight to search the crevices, corners, nooks, and crannies around your bedframe and headboard.
Yes! Washing your linens in a hot water wash has proven to be effective in killing bed bugs. Although this may not get rid of your infestation entirely, it will control the bed bug problem.
If you ignore the problem, bed bugs will reproduce and multiply and can quickly infest your entire house, from couches to carpets and even clothing. Once this happens you have a big problem that can get costly to get rid of.
Technically, bed bugs are unlikely to live on the clothes you're wearing, but they can quickly take up residence on items in a suitcase, and even what's in your drawers or on your floor.
So, in response to the question, “will bed bugs stay in clothes all day?” The answer is that they can't live on clothes that you're wearing. The parasites can and will stay on clothes stored away all day and even longer. Address the infestation as quickly as possible.
If a friend stays overnight somewhere on their way to your home for the holidays, they could bring bed bugs to your home. If a friend has a bed bug infestation and they don't realize it, they can bring bed bugs over to your house, even during the day.