Yes, hot water kills bed bugs, but only if it’s hot enough and sustained long enough. The thermal death point for adult bed bugs and nymphs is 118°F, while eggs require a slightly higher 122°F. Below those thresholds, bed bugs can survive for hours, and lukewarm or warm water won’t reliably eliminate them. Understanding exactly how to use heat effectively is the difference between wiping out an infestation in your laundry and accidentally spreading it through your home.
The Temperatures That Actually Kill Bed Bugs
Bed bugs die at specific temperature thresholds, and adults, nymphs, and eggs each have slightly different tolerances. Adults and nymphs reach their thermal death point at 118°F. Eggs are hardier and require 122°F to be killed on contact.
At slightly lower temperatures, between 112°F and 115°F, bed bugs can still be killed, but they need to be exposed consistently for several hours. This is why professional heat treatment companies typically raise the ambient room temperature to around 135°F and hold it there for four to five hours. The extra heat ensures that even bugs hiding deep in cracks and crevices reach lethal temperatures.
For your purposes at home, the key number to remember is 122°F. That’s the minimum that kills all life stages, including eggs, with sustained exposure of at least 20 minutes.
How Effective Is Your Washing Machine?
A standard hot water wash cycle can kill bed bugs, but it’s less reliable than most people assume. Some adult bugs die during washing, partly from the heat and partly from the agitation and submersion. But eggs frequently survive the wash cycle. They’re small, resilient, and can cling to fabric seams where water temperature may not stay consistently high enough.
For washing to be effective, you need the hottest setting your machine offers, ideally reaching at least 120°F. Most home water heaters are set to 120°F by default, which means your “hot” cycle may be right at the lower boundary of what’s effective against eggs. If your water heater is set lower, or if you’re using a warm cycle, you’re unlikely to kill everything.
The real bed bug killer in your laundry room isn’t the washer. It’s the dryer.
Why the Dryer Matters More Than the Wash
Clothes laundered in hot water and dried at temperatures above 122°F for at least 20 minutes will kill all stages of bed bugs: adults, nymphs, and eggs. Most household dryers on a medium or high setting exceed this threshold comfortably, making the dryer the most reliable tool you have.
Run the dryer on medium or high heat for at least 30 minutes. This gives enough time for heat to penetrate through folds, seams, and layers of fabric where bugs and eggs hide. Items that can’t be washed at all (like stuffed animals or throw pillows) can often go straight into the dryer on high heat for 30 minutes and come out bug-free.
A few things undermine this process. Overloading the dryer prevents heat from reaching every surface. Pulling items out early, before the full cycle completes, can leave survivors. And using a low-heat setting to protect delicate fabrics may save the garment but won’t kill the bugs. Eggs in particular survive shortcuts: if heat doesn’t reach every part of the fabric, some will make it through.
How to Handle Infested Laundry Safely
The washing and drying steps only matter if you handle infested items correctly before and after. One of the most common mistakes is carrying loose, infested clothing through the house to the laundry room, dropping bugs and eggs along the way.
Start by sealing all infested clothing and fabrics in plastic bags right where they are, in the bedroom or wherever the infestation is concentrated. Bed bugs can crawl out of loosely bundled items, so use bags you can seal tightly. When you reach the washer, transfer clothes directly from the sealed bag into the machine. Don’t sort on the floor or mix infested items with clean laundry.
After washing and drying on high heat, place the clean items into fresh, sealed bags or containers. This step is critical and often skipped. Putting freshly cleaned clothes back into an infested dresser, closet, or room means bugs that survived elsewhere in the room will simply reinfest your clean items. Keep everything sealed until the infestation is fully resolved.
What About Items You Can’t Wash?
Not everything can go through a hot wash cycle. Delicate fabrics, dry-clean-only garments, and non-washable items need alternative approaches.
- Dry cleaning: Place items in sealed plastic bags and notify the dry cleaner that bed bugs may be present. The chemicals and heat used in dry cleaning are effective, but the cleaner needs to know so they can prevent spreading bugs to other customers’ items.
- Freezing: Items can be sealed in plastic bags and placed in a household freezer for four days. This works for small, delicate items that can’t tolerate any heat.
- Dryer only: Many items that can’t be submerged in water can still tolerate dryer heat. Check the care label, and if the item can handle medium or high heat, 30 minutes in the dryer alone will do the job.
For suitcases and luggage, hand washing with the hottest water available (100°F to 120°F) and scrubbing along seams and folds with a brush is recommended. This won’t guarantee 100% kill rates the way a dryer cycle does, but it’s often the only practical option for hard-sided or oversized items.
Common Mistakes That Let Bed Bugs Survive
Even people who know hot water kills bed bugs often make errors that leave survivors behind. The most frequent failures come down to temperature and handling.
Using cold, warm, or quick-wash cycles is the biggest one. Cold water does essentially nothing to bed bugs. Warm water may kill some adults through drowning and agitation, but eggs routinely survive. Air drying instead of machine drying is another common gap, since hanging clothes on a line won’t generate the sustained heat needed to kill eggs in fabric folds.
The post-laundry step trips people up just as often. Placing clean clothes back into a room where bed bugs are still active in the mattress, baseboards, or furniture reinfests everything you just cleaned. Clean items should stay sealed in bags or plastic bins in a bug-free area until a professional treatment has cleared the space.
If you’re dealing with bed bugs after travel, unpack on a hard surface under bright light, ideally in a garage, mudroom, or laundry room rather than the bedroom. This gives you a chance to spot any hitchhikers before they establish themselves in your home. Everything from the suitcase goes straight into sealed bags and then into the washer and dryer on the highest heat the fabrics can handle.