Your bedroom is your sanctuary, not a place where you have to worry about mosquito bites. While achieving 24/7 mosquito protection throughout your home might be challenging, there are more than 100 ways to repel mosquitoes effectively.
With the right combination of ideas and techniques, you can transform your bedroom into a haven free from these flying pests. Here are some ideas for indoor mosquito traps you can start using right now in just 5 minutes:
Use High-Speed Fans
Having a fan located near your bed, but pointing away from you, is a great way to deter mosquitoes for two reasons. First, the fan’s breeze messes with the mosquito’s equilibrium, turning the devices into practical mosquito repellents as they literally blow them away. Second, a fan can dissipate the carbon dioxide (CO2) you breathe. That takes away a major attractant, as mosquitoes are drawn to CO2. That's the simplest way to protect your home from mosquitos.
Use Mosquito Repellent Plants
Any plant that contains citronella is a plant you want in your bedroom because mosquitoes hate this acidic compound. What’s more, a study published in the Malaria Journal says that citronella, when applied topically, keeps mosquitoes away from your skin.
Tougher Than Tom’s Mosquito Eliminator insect repellent sprays use the compound for that reason. But if you don’t fancy spraying yourself before bed, pop some citronella plants (along with lavender and tea tree leaves) on your bedside table. Or, failing that, use citronella candles – keep the candles away from flammable materials – or essential oil reed diffusers to keep pumping the compound’s scent into the air.
Sidenote – Basil, lemongrass, and citronella grass are all great choices if you go down this route.
Find a Way to Attract Birds
Maybe you don’t need a man-made mosquito killer in your bedroom.
After all, you could use a natural one. There are plenty of birds that eat the buzzing nuisances, including wrens, barn swallows, tree swallows, and even the humble hummingbird. So, putting out bird feed, such as dried leftover fruit, in addition to leaving plant matter in your garden could attract these mobile mosquito mashers so they eat the bugs for you before they ever get to your bedroom.
Get Rid of Any Potential Mosquito Breeding Ground
Sometimes, a strong defense is the best form of offense, which is definitely the case when you take on the breeding grounds that mosquitoes use to lay their larvae and multiply.
Look for standing water.
Puddles and ponds are obvious places for mosquitoes to breed, so try placing nets over ponds and draining puddles wherever you can. It’s also worth checking out any old equipment or yard furniture you have lying around, especially if it’s typically in a dark place. Any small crevice could become a place for water to gather and, by extension, a place for mosquitoes to breed.
Use Light-Colored Bedsheets and Curtains
Research suggests that mosquitoes are attracted to darker shades, likely due to these dark colors trapping heat, thus drawing the mosquitoes in. Thankfully, that fact gives you some recourse in the bedroom, as you can use lighter shades to potentially repel mosquitoes. Or, at least lower your chances of attracting them.
Use white or cream bedsheets and curtains – a trip to Livspace or a similar retailer gives you all that you need. If you want to go overboard, you could even try painting or wallpapering your walls in light colors, too.
Install Window and Door Screens
One of the oldest methods for keeping mosquitoes out is still as effective as it ever was – install screens over your windows and doors to create a mosquito-free house.
Granted, this is a more costly method. You have to pay a fair amount of money to have screens fitted for every potential opening in your house. Plus, the size of the gaps in the screens is an issue, as you want air to flow but have to account for the fact that mosquitoes can squeeze through gaps as small as 9mm (about 0.35 inches) when they’re determined to get inside. But even if the gaps in your screens aren’t quite that small, they can still serve as deterrents to mosquitoes who can’t figure out their way through.
Attack the Mosquitoes Using Odors
You’ve already seen how citronella repels mosquitoes because of its smell. The same goes for a few other things you may have around the house, including alcohol and apple cider vinegar. The latter is proven to have a repellent effect when it’s of a high enough concentration (hint – don’t water it down). As for alcohol, there aren’t real studies supporting the technique but anecdotal evidence suggests that leaving a dish of alcohol in your bedroom could deter the irritating little bugs.
You could even apply garlic spray if the situation gets desperate – your room will smell but garlic is actively toxic to mosquitoes. The same goes for cloves and sliced lemons, by the way. Mosquitoes avoid both because they’re basically poison to the bugs.
Use Camphor
Distill the bark and wood of a camphor tree and you get camphor oil – an extremely effective mosquito repellant. In fact, studies show that the odor this oil emits is effective enough to achieve up to 97.6% protection against some species of mosquitoes, making it another oil to add to your diffuser.
Use Coffee Grounds (As Long as They’re Roasted)
Despite claims to the contrary, regular old coffee grounds don’t appear to have any repellent effects against mosquitoes. But once you’ve roasted the beans, it’s another story. Evidence suggests that female mosquitoes are far less likely to lay eggs in areas where roasted coffee beans are present.
So, you could try placing the beans near standing water that you can’t clear up – ponds and puddles, for instance – as well as potentially using them as deterrents in your bedroom.
Keep Mozzies Out of the Bedroom
There are other methods you could try if none of the above natural remedies for mosquitoes (along with a few practical ones) don’t work. Chemical repellents, like DEET, picaridin, or oil of lemon eucalyptus are all supposedly effective. DEET, in particular, works well but it’s a dangerous chemical that can cause seizures in children and pets. Some companies also sell mosquito repellent patches or bracelets, which typically take advantage of citronella or one of the other odors that repel mosquitoes to keep them away.
But if you want the most effective way to keep mosquitoes away from you in the bedroom, look to Tougher Than Tom. A combination of its Mosquito Eliminator Spray (packed with citronella) and Mosquito Eliminator Lamp should be more than enough to keep the bugs at bay, especially when combined with some of the methods discussed in this article.