Bedbugs are hitchhikers. They move from place to place by riding along on clothing, bags, furniture, or other personal items.

Common ways people pick them up include:

• rideshare vehicles
• movie theaters
• airplanes and trains
• thrift stores or second-hand furniture
• hotels or short-term rentals
• visiting friends or relatives who unknowingly have them

Another common situation is workplaces or schools. Bedbugs can travel on backpacks, purses, jackets, or lunch bags.

As a pest control professional, one of the most common situations I’ve seen is children bringing them home from school or a friend’s house. A single hitchhiking bug in a backpack or jacket is all it takes to start a problem.

Yes. Bedbugs do not care if a home is clean or dirty.

They are only interested in finding a person to feed on and a place nearby to hide.

While homes with excessive clutter may experience larger infestations because there are more hiding places, very clean homes can absolutely get bedbugs.

Many of the cleanest homes I’ve seen as a pest control technician have had bedbug problems. Getting bedbugs does not mean your house is dirty.

One of the most practical tricks is the lint trap method. Take the dirty clothes from the room you’re unsure about and run them through the dryer on high heat for at least 30 minutes. Then check the lint trap.

Bedbugs are strongly attracted to worn clothing because of the body heat, carbon dioxide, and body odor absorbed into the fabric — the same cues they use to find a sleeping person. If bedbugs or eggs were hiding in those clothes, the heat will kill them and you’ll see them in the lint trap.

It’s a simple, reliable way to confirm whether a room is infested before committing to a full treatment.

Bedbugs locate their hosts using body heat, carbon dioxide, and human scent.

Worn clothing absorbs all three — it carries your body odor, residual warmth, and the biological cues bedbugs use to find a sleeping person.

That’s why dirty laundry left on the floor near or around the bed can become a harborage spot, and why clothes can pick up bedbugs in infested environments like hotel rooms, airplanes, subways, movie theaters, or schools.

A single bedbug hitchhiking home in a jacket or a bag from a hotel is all it takes to start an infestation.

Yes — monitoring traps are an excellent tool both for catching a problem early and for tracking an existing situation.

Interceptor-style cup traps that fit under bed legs and sticky glue traps both work well. If you’re on high alert — just moved into a new place, recently traveled, or think you may have been exposed — check them daily. For general peace of mind monitoring, checking weekly or monthly is sufficient.

Keep in mind that bedbugs don’t typically start moving under the bed until the population is well established. Early on they’ll feed on you and retreat directly to the headboard or nearby hiding spots, so don’t rely on under-bed traps alone as your only check.

In the early stages of an infestation bedbugs stay very close to where they feed — typically in the mattress seams, headboard, bed frame, and nightstand. It’s not until the population grows more established that they start moving further away from the sleeping area.

At that point they may begin spreading to nearby furniture, baseboards, and eventually other rooms.

This is why catching them early is so important — a small contained infestation is much easier to treat than one that has spread throughout the home.

Not overnight, but faster than most people expect once conditions are right.

The biggest risk factors are shared sleeping spaces, adjacent rooms with cracks in shared walls, and infected bedding or blankets being moved to other areas of the home. If someone takes an infested blanket from their bedroom to the living room couch, they can seed a new population there.

Bedbugs can also travel through walls, which is a particular concern in apartments and multi-unit buildings where they can detect the presence of a new host nearby and move toward them through small cracks.

Yes, and they’re very good at it. Bedbugs can sense the presence of a human host — body heat, carbon dioxide, and scent — and will actively move toward that source even through walls.

If a neighbor moves out of an infested unit, the bedbugs left behind will begin seeking a new host and can work their way through even small cracks in shared walls. Many apartment buildings use firewall construction with fire-resistant drywall, but bedbugs are capable of getting through small gaps regardless.

If you move into a new apartment, using sticky monitoring traps from day one is a smart precaution even if you see no signs of activity.

Before you ever see a bedbug, look for two things.

First, small marks or bite marks on your skin — often in a line or cluster, typically on exposed areas like arms, neck, and shoulders.

Second, tiny spots of blood on your sheets where a bedbug was crushed or fed.

These are usually the first signs people notice. By the time you’re seeing live bugs, the infestation is already established. The lint trap trick and monitoring traps are both good ways to confirm suspicions early before the problem gets bigger.

Bedbugs prefer to hide very close to where people sleep.

That’s why they are most often found in:

• mattresses
• bed frames
• headboards
• nightstands
• furniture near the bed
• wall décor or pictures near the bed

Treating the bed area and furniture within about six feet of the bed targets the areas where bedbugs spend most of their time.

Cleaning removes a large number of bedbugs and helps the spray reach the places where they hide.

Vacuuming also pulls bedbugs out of seams, cracks, and small hiding spots around the bed and furniture.

If you use a vacuum with a bag, remove the bag and throw it away immediately so the bedbugs are not left inside the house.

Bedbugs look for tight, protected hiding places close to where people sleep.

The space behind pictures, mirrors, and wall décor near the bed is a common hiding spot. That’s why it’s important to check and treat these areas during the treatment process.

Yes. High heat is one of the most effective ways to kill bedbugs and their eggs.

Run clothes on high heat for at least 30 minutes at 120 to 125 degrees to reliably kill both.

If your dryer doesn’t reach high heat, a lower temperature of around 113 to 115 degrees will still work but requires at least 90 minutes to kill the eggs.

The eggs are harder to kill than the adults, so time and temperature both matter. This is why washing and drying bedding on high heat is one of the first steps in any bedbug treatment.

Yes. When using any aerosol insecticide, you should avoid breathing the vapors while spraying.

A good practice is to:

• open a window while applying the product
• spray in short bursts instead of long sprays
• leave the room briefly while the spray settles

Good airflow helps the treatment area clear quickly.

Wearing gloves is a good idea, especially while moving furniture or handling treated surfaces.

Gloves help prevent skin contact with the spray and also make cleanup easier if you’re moving bed frames or furniture during the treatment.

There may be a mild chemical smell immediately after spraying.

This is normal and temporary. The odor fades as the spray dries.

Opening a window during and after treatment can help air out the room more quickly.

Once the spray has dried, the smell should be gone.

Once the spray has completely dried, you can safely:

• put clean sheets back on the bed
• remake the bed
• return the room to normal use

Allowing the spray to dry ensures the treatment has settled properly.

The treatment works in two ways:

• the insecticide kills adult bedbugs
• the insect growth regulator prevents younger bedbugs from developing

Together, these effects help break the bedbug life cycle and stop the infestation from continuing.