How to Get Rid of Ants in the Bedroom: 13 Tips & Tricks

Ants are some of the hardiest and most adaptive animals on the planet. Ants can be extremely annoying when they invade your home, and the last place you want to find creepy crawly bugs is in your bedroom where you sleep. It is easy to ignore one ant that you spot inside your room, but one ant can quickly become two, and two can quickly become two hundred. If you find ants in your bedroom, do not panic, there are many ways to get rid of the ants and make sure that they never come back.

The 13 Tips for Getting Rid of Ants in the Bedroom

1. Look for Where the Ants Are Coming From

One of the first things you should do when dealing with ants is to look to see where they are coming and going from. It is easy to freak out and start smashing ants as soon as you see them, which can cause them to scatter and run around. This will make it harder to determine the ultimate source of the ants. Oftentimes you will find that the ants are coming in from a certain area. It is unlikely that you have an ant colony in your bedroom, which means the ants are coming in from somewhere else for food and water and returning to where they live. Finding the source of the ants will make it much easier to determine your next steps.

For example, if the ants are coming in through a window, you might want to treat or seal the window. Sometimes you will find that the ants are coming from somewhere else in the house or up through the carpet or floors.

2. Close and Seal Any Openings Where You Find Ants

If you find out that the ants are coming in from outside, you should start making plans to seal any openings that you find. Windows and doors can be sealed with weather stripping, expanding foam, or caulk. If the ants are simply coming in from outside, sealing their most favorable route can quickly cut off the flow of ants into your bedroom.

Ants are like any other living creature, they are looking for food, water, and a place to live. Ants will come inside during rain storms or severe weather events in order to escape the unfavorable conditions outside. Closing off any gaps or openings will make it so they cannot get inside when they want to force them to find a better and easier place to hunker down.

3. Clean Your Bedroom Thoroughly

One of the easiest things you can do is give your bedroom a thorough cleaning. Do not skimp out on this process. Use strong cleaners and clean every surface. Vacuum the floors. Wipe down the windows. Look for any old food or spills that could be drawing the ants. Sometimes cleaning your bedroom is enough to dissuade the ants from coming back. Do not simply pick up the room. Give the room a really good deep cleaning.

4. Stop Eating in Your Bedroom

Some people like eating in their bedroom but having food in your room is a strong attractor for ants. Tiny crumbs, invisible patches of sugar, and smells can lure ants from a long way off. Even if you do not think you are leaving a mess, you are likely leaving enough food around to attract ants. This is especially true if you eat in your bedroom regularly. If you continue having problems with ants in your bedroom, you should stop eating in your bedroom at once. If you stop bringing food into the room, you immediately cut off a strong attractor for the ants.

5. Vacuum Regularly

Vacuuming regularly can help get rid of ants for several reasons. First, vacuuming can suck up the ants physically. If you suspect that you are vacuuming up many ants, you should empty your vacuum outside so you do not accidentally move the ants to your trash can, where they will be very happy. Second, vacuuming can remove tiny particles that ants like to eat. Vacuuming can also disrupt the ants’ chemical pheromone trails that they use to communicate and call their friends. Vacuuming daily when you have ants can help eliminate the ant problem in your bedroom.

6. Repel Them

Ants are extremely sensitive to strong scents and chemicals. Ants communicate through liquid pheromones. These pheromones can attract other ants and disrupting them can confuse ants and make it so they cannot tell their many, many, many friends that your bedroom is a great place to hang out. There are numerous natural ant repellents that you can spray or sprinkle around your bedroom to disrupt, confuse and deter ants from entering.

Some of the most effective natural ant repellents include diatomaceous earth, peppermint, red and black pepper, lemon juice, white vinegar, and tea tree oil. Spray the inside and outside of your room with these repellents to keep ants away.

Repellents are particularly effective when you catch an ant infestation early. If the ants are simply scouting out your bedroom and have not arrived in force yet these repellents will disrupt their lines of communication and prevent them from alerting the main colony to the presence of your bedroom.

7. Bait Them

Baiting ants is not the fastest method of eliminating an infestation, but it is one of the most effective. You can buy specialty ant bait that attracts the ants and then allows them to bring the poison back to the colony. The bait will then poison the ant colony, causing the queen and many of the ants to die. This process can take a few days to take effect, but the end result should be the complete elimination of the offending ant colony.

Buy ant bait, put the bait in the areas where you have seen the highest concentration of ants, and then wait for the poison to do its job. The bait method works especially well because it not only kills the ants invading your bedroom, but it also eliminates the source meaning that they cannot come back.

8. Treat Your Bedroom

If you have a particularly stubborn infestation, you might need to treat your bedroom. There are in-home foggers and pest treatments that you can buy from your local store that will completely treat a space for pests. The methods you can purchase yourself are fairly effective, but if you want a surefire elimination, you might need to call a local pest control technician to come in and treat the bedroom with commercial-grade chemicals. Not everyone wants to introduce chemicals into their bedroom, but in severe cases, it might be the most effective course of action.

9. Treat the Outside of Your Home

One of the ways to reduce the number of ants in and around your house is to treat the outside. You can buy sprays at your local hardware store that will create a bug barrier around your home. You need to clear any brush or weeds from the base of your house and then spray the perimeter. You can also treat your lawn for pests like ants. Cutting down on the number of ants that are living in the immediate vicinity of your home will vastly reduce the likelihood that they will make their way inside and into your bedroom.

You can also have the outside of your home professionally treated for all sorts of pests, including ants.

10. Check Any Indoor Plants for Ants

Sometimes your indoor plants can be hiding a gross secret. Ants will occasionally find their way inside and make a home in the soil of your houseplants. Go and check your pots for signs of ants. You can disturb the soil with your fingers or use a trowel to pull back some of the dirt. If you see ants crawling around in the dirt of your plant, you might have stumbled upon the source of your ants. Ants want to set up shop in natural dirt, and the soil inside your home is a perfect place for ants to hide. You will need to take the pot outside and empty it in order to remove the ants. In extreme cases you might have to get rid of the plant and the pot entirely to ensure that you have gotten rid of the source of the infestation for good.

11. Watch for Ants in Other Parts of Your House

Sometimes the bedroom is not the source of the ants. Check other parts of your house for signs of ants. If you find ants in your garage or kitchen, then the ants could simply be wandering away from where they are concentrating and getting into your bedroom. That will require you to treat the other areas of your house for ants to get rid of the source. This tip is especially relevant for people who continue to treat their room for ants and find that they keep coming back. That usually means you are not getting to the source of the ants, which can be hiding somewhere else in your house, especially in areas that you do not frequent or do not pay attention to.

12. Don’t Just Spray Them

Ant spray that you can buy at the grocery store has its uses, but it is not the most effective way to eliminate ants in your bedroom. Ant spray is fine for a lone ant that you find wandering across your kitchen counter, but it is not enough to eliminate a serious source of ants. If you have a large number of ants in your bedroom, you will need to do more than spray them with a $5 basic ant killer.

Ant sprays do nothing to combat the source of the problem. It will not eliminate the things that are attracting the ants, and it cannot kill the colony itself.

13. Make Sure You Don’t Have Any Termites

Sometimes people mistake termites for ants. They look very similar, but they cause very different infestations. Ants are annoying, but they are generally harmless. Termites, on the other hand, can cause thousands of dollars in lasting damage to your home. It is always a good idea to closely look at the ants in your bedroom to make sure they are not termites, especially if you do not eat or drink in your bedroom. Termites need to be taken care of professionally to ensure that they do not cause permanent damage to your home.

Conclusion

Whether you have just a few ants in your bedroom or a whole stream of them, there is an effective treatment on this list that will work for you. One of the most important steps to getting rid of ants in the bedroom is to diagnose the source of the problem and figure out where and why they are coming in. Once you do that, you can effectively choose an elimination method that will clear your room of ants and keep them away for good. Bedrooms are a sanctuary where people spend hours a day, and the last thing you need is bothersome ants invading your personal space.

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