What do bed bug bites look like?

What they usually look like

• Small raised red bumps, often with a darker centre
• In a rough line or tight cluster rather than scattered
• On skin that was exposed while you slept
• Itchy, sometimes intensely, and often worse a day or two later

Telling them from flea and mosquito bites

Flea bites are usually around the ankles and lower legs - fleas live in carpet and jump upward. Bed bug bites are more often on the upper body, because that's what's exposed above the covers.

Mosquito bites tend to be individual and scattered rather than lined up, and they appear immediately rather than developing overnight.

None of these is reliable enough on its own. People react so differently that bite pattern is a hint, not evidence.

Some people don't react at all

A significant proportion of people show no visible reaction to bed bug bites. That's worth knowing for two reasons: one person in a household can be covered in bites while another has none and assumes there's no problem, and an absence of bites doesn't mean an absence of bed bugs.

Go and look at the bed

This is what actually settles it. Check mattress seams and piping at the head end, bed frame joins, inside the headboard, and skirting behind the bed. You're looking for small dark spots, tiny blood smears, shed skins, or live insects - flat, oval, reddish-brown and about the size of an apple pip.

Don't spray before you're sure

Bed bugs are the one pest where acting on a guess reliably makes things worse. Consumer sprays push them deeper into a building and into adjacent rooms, and moving a mattress through the house does the same. Confirm first.