Can Bed Bugs Live in Carpet?

Bed bugs are annoying little creatures that can quickly infest your mattress if you’re not careful.

If it wasn’t bad enough that you had tiny pests crawling around the place where you sleep, they bite! Once they bite and feed off of your blood, they swell in size and showcase your blood within their bodies. Seriously, we’re getting queasy just thinking about it. 

The good thing is that bedbugs only infest your mattress and bedroom, so you can just stay in the other rooms of your house if you have an infestation – right? Well, unfortunately, that isn’t the case and bed bugs can certainly live in the carpet all over your house. 

Not the best news, of course, and you might be lifting your feet up as we speak to avoid being a bug’s next meal.

We don’t blame you, but we’ve collated all of the most important information in this article so that you know what to do once you find bed bugs in your house. 

How to Identify a Bed Bug

Bed bugs are little creatures that are about the same size as an apple seed. They crawl around quickly and can often be seen on the floor, walls, and furniture of your house. They don’t have wings but they can climb. 

Once a bed bug has fed, they will swell up and turn a red color rather than dark brown. Bed bugs can easily lay eggs and therefore it’s also important to know how to detect baby bed bugs as well. Young bed bugs shed their skin five times before reaching maturity, so if you find any bug skin around your house, you might have cause for concern. 

The real fun of determining whether you have a bed bug infestation is looking for bites on your body. Nasty creatures like bed bugs tend to leave bloodstains where they’ve bitten you that can be imprinted on your sheets or clothing. 

The bite will be small and raised, and it might have a darker center than the outside. You might find that it itches or is painful. Here’s the real kicker, though – an immature bed bug will shed its skin right after feeding on you. It will literally leave a mark of victory on you to ensure that you know that it was there! 

Why Do Bed Bugs Infest Carpet? 

If bed bugs have infested your carpet, chances are that they’ve been living in your mattress for a while.

Mattresses are thick and excellent areas for bed bugs to live and lay eggs, but once they’ve lived there for a while, it might start to become a little crowded for their liking. 

The original bed bugs might choose to relocate into a retirement village – or in this case, your carpet. If you’ve found bed bugs living in the carpet, we would advise you to check your mattress as soon as possible. 

How to Get Rid of Bed Bugs in Carpet

Luckily for you, there are a few different methods of getting rid of bed bugs in the carpet. However, before you settle on a method of destruction, you should follow some steps to ensure that you don’t get any more bugs infesting your home. 

Preparation

You’ll need to prepare the house before treating the carpet. As we’ve already mentioned, bed bugs often come from the mattress and spread onto the carpet. This means that you’ll need to remove the insects from the mattress, bed frame, and box springs. 

Next, you should see whether they have infested any more of your furniture, bedding, walls, and clothing. If you find bed bugs on any of these things, you’ll need to spray them with a bed bug killer and make sure that all of the bugs die. 

Once you think all of the bugs are dead, make sure that you wash the bedding and clothing, and wipe down the furniture with disinfectant. This will ensure that any eggs or immature bed bugs are removed. 

Clean up!

Now that you have cleaned all of the infested furniture, you need to remove everything from the carpet to ensure that nothing else can become infected. Do this slowly and carefully to ensure that nothing gets reinfected as you’re removing it. 

This is a big job, but it is also necessary so that all your efforts are not wasted. Keep all of your furniture outside of the infected room until you’re sure that all the bed bugs are dead.

We would continue to spray all of the furniture over the next couple of days to really make sure that the bugs are gone and aren’t going to start infesting the rest of your house.

Ways to kill bed bugs living in the carpet

Silica Gel

We all have those little packets of silica gel lying around from countless purchases, but you are going to need many more packets if you’re going to get on top of the bed bugs.

Sprinkle this all over the carpet so that the bed bugs become dehydrated quickly and die. 

Steaming

Bed bugs don’t cope well in the heat so a good way of killing them is to buy a steamer and get to work on your carpet.

Not only will this kill all of the bed bugs almost instantly, but you’ll also benefit from a cleaner carpet. Win-win!  

What to Do Now?

Once you’ve managed to kill all of the bed bugs, vacuum the corpses up. Please note that vacuuming bed bugs when they’re still alive won’t kill them, and they’ll probably climb back out of the machine when you’re not looking. 

This is because bed bugs can live up to a year without eating or drinking, so make sure that they’re dead before you clean them up. Once you’ve done this, empty the vacuum and make sure that you continue to vacuum frequently to avoid a re-infestation. 

Final Say

We hope that our article has helped you to determine whether the creepy crawlies on your carpet are in fact bed bugs or not. If they are our article should be able to talk you through the process of getting rid of them and preventing them from coming back.

Make sure to check all of your furniture for signs of bed bugs before you remove the furniture, and check again once you’re ready to put it back in the room.

Don’t forget that the mattress is more than likely the origin of the problem, so ensure that it is completely free of bed bugs before sleeping on it again.