How do I check secondhand furniture for bed bugs and cockroaches?

Check it before it comes through the door, and you cut the risk a lot. Bed bugs and cockroaches do travel in secondhand beds, sofas and electronics, but they hide in predictable places, and ten careful minutes with a torch is how you find them. Buying secondhand is still a good idea. It just needs a look first.

Already brought something in and then saw a bug? Do not panic and do not start spraying. Skip to the last section.

What you need

• A bright torch, or your phone light.
• An old plastic card, to slide into seams and cracks and push out anything hiding.
• A pale sheet to work on, so anything that drops is easy to see.
• Large plastic bags and tape.

Do the check outside, in a garage, or at the seller’s door. Not in your bedroom.

The checklist

1. Turn it over. Undersides, the inside of legs, the bottom of drawers. Pests like the side you never see.
2. Follow every seam and joint. Where wood meets wood, where fabric meets frame, along piping and staples on upholstery. Run the card along them.
3. Look into screw holes, bolt holes and cracks. Bed frames have plenty. Bed bugs fit in very small gaps.
4. Pull out drawers and check the runners and the back panel.
5. Know what you are looking for. For bed bugs: clusters of small dark spots like ink dots, pale shed skins, tiny white eggs, flat reddish brown bugs. For cockroaches: droppings like ground pepper, small brown egg cases, a musty smell. Our page on droppings and egg cases shows them side by side.

Item by item

• Beds, headboards and mattresses are the highest risk for bed bugs. A used mattress is hard to check fully. If you keep one, fit a bed bug encasement and interceptors under the legs.
• Sofas and upholstered chairs: lift cushions, check under the dust cover on the base, run the card along every seam.
• Cushions, curtains and rugs: wash on the hottest setting the care label allows and tumble dry hot, before they come into living rooms.
• Hard furniture: vacuum every joint and crack, inspect, wipe. Bin the vacuum contents in a sealed bag outside.
• Electronics and appliances: microwaves, printers, robot vacuums and games consoles attract cockroaches because they are warm. Inspect the vents and underside, tap over the pale sheet, and never spray inside. Cockroaches in my microwave has more.

Anything you are unsure about stays outside or sealed in a bag until it has been checked properly. That might be a day, or it might mean asking a pest professional.

From a home that had bed bugs

Inherited furniture from a house you know had bed bugs needs more than a look. Keep it out of your home until it has been treated. Ask a pest professional how they would treat it, especially for antiques with delicate finishes or old upholstery, because some treatments suit fragile pieces better than others. Ask whether they can treat it before it moves. Get a written note of what was done.

Already brought it in and saw a bug?

1. Catch it or photograph it and work out what it is. A small, tan insect with two stripes behind the head is likely a German cockroach nymph or adult. A flat, oval, reddish brown one is more likely a bed bug. The plan is different for each.
2. Do not spray the bed or the item. Spray on a bed is something you then sleep on, and it scatters cockroaches into the room. Baking soda does not kill them either.
3. Contain it. Do not move the item to another room. Wash and hot dry any fabrics that touched it.
4. Put out traps. Monitor traps near the item for cockroaches, interceptors under the bed legs for bed bugs. Check weekly for a few weeks. See monitor traps.

One cockroach out of a secondhand gadget, with the item bagged and removed, fabrics washed and floors cleaned, is a good response. Traps in that room for the next few weeks tell you whether it was alone.

Kids and pets: sticky traps and any bait go out of reach of children and pets, as the label says. Keep children off a used bed or sofa until you have checked it.