Is The Colour Of Your Sheets Inviting The Bed Bugs To Bite?

#1 Could the colour of your sheets be making you a target for bugs

It seems certain colours attract more of the blood-sucking critters that like to feed on us as we sleep.

So if you want to sleep tight, and don't want the bed bugs to bite, it's best to avoid dark colours and, especially black and red.

#2Red sheets mirror the colour of the bugs and attract them to the bed

A study published the Journal of Medical Entomology, found that bed bugs prefer to take shelter in black and red materials.

That's not because they are the colours associated with the vampires that share their nocturnal thirst for blood.

In fact it's because black suggests darkness, their favourite environment, while red is the colour of the bugs' exosketeton, suggesting the presence of other bugs and they want to share bed space with their own kind.

#3 The bugs are making a comeback in Britain since the 1980s

Pale green, white or yellow sheets, on the other hand, send them scuttling in the other direction.

It's thought they are repulsed by these colours as they are associated with brightly lit areas, where bugs don't like to hang around.

But the study's author, Nebraska Union College entomologist Corraine McNeill, doesn't recommend binning the linen if it's the wrong colour.

Since bedbugs typically shelter in dark areas and seek blood through cues unrelated to colour, that may not protect you from infestation.

Instead, she wants to use her finding to design better traps, used to check the presence of bugs.

She said that many traps used to date have been white, which "is exactly the opposite of what you'd want."

#4 Bed bugs cause nasty bites by sucking blood at night

Although once rife in the UK, bed bugs had almost disappeared from our bedrooms by the 1980s.

But centrally heated houses and foreign travel have contributed to a resurgence in the blood-suckers who make their home in mattresses, bed frames, furniture and electrical fittings.

Attracted by body heat and carbon dioxide, they bite exposed skin and feed on blood. Adult bed bugs look like lentils, oval, flat and up to 5mm long.

An infestation from one female can rise to 5,000 bed bugs in six months.

They're not just found in out homes.

Earlier this year a BA flight suffered a "severe" infestation of bed bugs but was allowed to fly because, staff claimed, there was no time to disinfect the seats.