People get bedbugs by unknowingly bringing them home on luggage, clothing, used furniture, or other personal items. Bedbugs don’t fly or jump. They crawl onto belongings in infested spaces and ride along to new locations, which is why entomologists call them “excellent hitchhikers.” Understanding exactly how this happens can help you avoid an infestation in the first place.
How Bedbugs Hitchhike Into Your Home
Bedbugs spread almost entirely through human movement. They crawl into suitcases, backpacks, purses, and clothing while you sleep or sit in an infested room. A single overnight stay in a hotel, an Airbnb, or a friend’s guest bedroom is enough for several bugs to stow away in your luggage. Because they’re flat, roughly the size of an apple seed, and mostly active at night, you’re unlikely to notice them climbing aboard.
Travel is the most common way infestations start. Bedbugs can move from one country to another in a matter of hours inside a suitcase. But you don’t have to leave your city to pick them up. They also spread through movie theaters, office buildings, public transit seats, and anywhere people sit or store bags for extended periods. Once a bedbug reaches a new building, it can move between apartments by crawling through hallways or squeezing through tiny cracks in shared walls, ceilings, and utility openings.
Used Furniture and Secondhand Items
Bringing home used furniture is one of the highest-risk ways to introduce bedbugs. Mattresses, box springs, and headboards are obvious culprits, but stuffed sofas and upholstered chairs are nearly as common hiding spots. Nightstands, dressers, and other bedroom furniture also harbor them, since bedbugs tend to cluster within a few feet of where people sleep.
Thrift stores, curbside pickups, and online marketplace deals all carry risk. Bedbugs can arrive at a thrift store hidden inside donated clothing, textiles, or furniture from an infested home. If you’re buying secondhand upholstered items, inspect every seam, fold, and crevice before loading anything into your car. Hard-surfaced furniture like wooden dressers is lower risk but not zero risk, since bedbugs hide in joints, screw holes, and drawer tracks.
What Draws Bedbugs to People
Bedbugs locate hosts primarily by detecting carbon dioxide, the gas you exhale with every breath. Research published in Medical and Veterinary Entomology found that traps emitting CO2 caught dramatically more bedbugs than traps without it, across every life stage. Body heat plays a supporting role. The combination of CO2 and warmth around 98°F closely mimics a sleeping person, which is why bedbugs feed almost exclusively at night while you’re stationary in bed.
This means bedbugs aren’t attracted by dirty homes or poor hygiene. They’re attracted by the simple fact that a living, breathing human is nearby. Clean apartments get bedbugs just as often as cluttered ones. Clutter does make them harder to find and eliminate, but it doesn’t cause the infestation.
How Fast an Infestation Grows
A single fertilized female can start a full infestation. After one blood meal, she produces between one and seven eggs per day for roughly 10 days. At room temperature (above 70°F), about 60% of those eggs hatch within six days, and over 90% hatch by day nine. A bedbug goes from egg to reproductive adult in approximately 37 days, passing through five nymph stages along the way. Each nymph stage requires at least one blood meal to advance.
This timeline means a handful of hitchhiking bugs can become a visible problem within a few weeks. By the time most people realize they have bedbugs, the population has often been growing for a month or more.
Signs You’ve Picked Them Up
Bedbugs leave physical evidence well before you spot a live bug. The most reliable sign is fecal spotting: small black dots, often in clusters of 10 or more, found along mattress seams, behind headboards, or on bed frames. These spots are black rather than red because the blood has already been digested, and they feel smooth to the touch because they’re dried liquid.
Other telltale evidence includes:
- Molted skins: Translucent, empty shells that look like a bedbug but are hollow. You’ll find them in different sizes corresponding to the five nymph stages.
- Eggs: Tiny, pearl-white, about the size of a pinhead. Eggs older than five days have visible dark eyespots.
- Aggregation sites: Spots where live bugs, fecal dots, cast skins, and eggs all cluster together. These are typically within a few feet of where someone sleeps.
Bites alone aren’t a reliable indicator. Bedbug bites look similar to mosquito bites or other insect bites, and some people don’t react to them at all. Physical evidence on your mattress or furniture is far more conclusive.
Why Infestations Are Increasing
Bedbug infestations have surged over the past two decades. The resurgence tracks closely with two factors: increased global travel and growing insecticide resistance. Many bedbug populations have developed resistance to the chemicals that once kept them in check, making them harder to eliminate once they establish in a building. Cities with high population density and frequent traveler turnover are hit hardest. Chicago ranked as the worst city for bedbugs on Orkin’s 2024 U.S. list, joining Paris as a global hotspot.
Reducing Your Risk
When staying in a hotel or rental, inspect the mattress seams, headboard, and luggage rack before unpacking. Keep suitcases on hard surfaces or in the bathtub rather than on the bed or carpeted floor. When you return home, unpack directly into a washing machine and dry everything on high heat.
If you suspect your luggage has been exposed, heat is the most effective treatment. The EPA recommends steam cleaning at a minimum of 130°F to kill all life stages. Cold treatment also works, but only if your freezer reaches 0°F or below. Seal the items in a bag and leave them in the freezer for at least three days. Many household freezers don’t get cold enough, so check the temperature first.
For secondhand purchases, avoid picking up upholstered furniture from curbs or unknown sources. If you buy from a thrift store, inspect carefully and consider isolating the item in a garage or sealed space for a few weeks before bringing it into your bedroom. Bedbugs can survive months without feeding, so a quick visual check isn’t always enough for heavily upholstered pieces.