It’s a pretty yucky feeling to wake up one morning with bed bug bites on your body. But it’s even more disturbing to know that when you go to bed that night those disgusting critters will come out again for another feast. If you’re hosting a living banquet for the creatures, you can shut down their dining hall by using mattress and box spring covers. These covers provide an effective form of bed bugs control. They not only get rid of the critters by trapping them inside, but also provide an early bed bug detection system.

The mattress and box spring covers you use for this simple-but-effective type of bed bugs control, though, aren’t your ordinary ones. They’re specially constructed ones designed specifically for bedbugs. These covers are called encasements because they completely enclose the mattress and box spring, and provide no way for the critters to go into them or, if already inside, to get out of them.

How to Get Rid of Bedbugs Using Encasements

Pest control experts know how to get rid of bed bugs. And they know that mattress and box spring encasements provide a good way of doing that. Most bedbugs live inside mattresses and box springs, and come out at night to feed on sleepers. When you encase your mattress and box spring, the critters are stuck inside, with no way out. After awhile, they starve to death.

Some bedbugs live in other parts of the room as well. When you use encasements, these critters can’t get inside the mattress and box spring. Instead, they remain in their regular hiding places, and can be killed easily when a pest control professional gives the room a bed bug treatment.

How to Detect Bedbugs Using Encasements

Mattress and box spring encasements also provide an early detection system. Right now, your room might be bedbug free, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use encasements. If you should have the misfortune of having an infestation, you can detect signs of critters on the surface of the encasements and call a pest control professional to give the room a bed bug treatment before the infestation gets out of hand. You also have the peace of mind knowing the critters aren’t inside your mattress and box spring because they couldn’t get through the encasements..

How to Select a Mattress and Box Spring Encasement

Not all mattress and box spring encasements are of the same quality. Some are better than others. For example, some encasements are made from material that bedbugs can feed through. These encasements give you a false sense of security — and allow the infestation to get worse. Other encasements use zippers whose teeth are large enough for bedbugs to slip between, allowing the critters to get outside. Still other encasements have zipper stops that leave gaps large enough for bedbugs to go through.

Before you buy mattress and box spring encasements, be sure to research each brand carefully. Read reviews about them. And see if any of the companies’ claims can be backed by scientific data. After all, there’s nothing worse than thinking that something works when it doesn’t.

Call in the Pros

If you have an infestation, though, using mattress and box spring encasements isn’t enough to eliminate all the bedbugs. To do that, you should call in a pest control company such as Colonial Pest Control, whose professional exterminators know how to kill bed bugs.