There are many ways to eliminate centipedes in the bathroom, such as spraying pesticides, putting mothballs, different repellent plants, and sprinkling salt.
Whether you live in a single-family house or an apartment, your bathroom is always at risk of centipede infestation.
Therefore, knowing everything about killing and keeping those little critters away from your home is essential.
Centipede Infestation in Bathrooms
While centipedes can encroach on any area in a house, they love to settle in bathrooms as they love damp, dark places, of which a bathroom has plenty!
Due to this, encountering crawling centipedes in the bathroom is common unless you take preventative measures.
Preventing Centipedes from Entering Your Bathroom
As the old adage goes, prevention is better than cure. You should employ techniques to keep centipedes out of your home first, and if those do not work, only then move on to assassinating centipedes.
Perhaps the most straightforward method to prevent centipedes from coming into a bathroom is spackling all holes and fissures in the walls and between tiles.
Centipedes are drawn towards moisture, which is why they love to be in bathrooms and the best route to get there is through the cracks in the walls and between tiles.
Therefore, sealing gaps in walls and tiles seems like a clean solution to keep the crawling critters away from your bathroom.
Keep in mind that centipedes are elusive little pests and can get away sneakily through holes and gaps.
So shutting those entry points is not only crucial for preventing them from entering your bathroom but also killing them once they have entered the premises.
Therefore, regardless of where you stand in your battle against centipedes, you must spackle up the walls and add grout between tiles to seal all spaces which may become an entrance for centipedes.
Take Away Their Food Source
All living beings need sustenance to survive, and if they don’t get it, they starve to death. That is exactly what you need to do in order to deter centipedes from coming into your bathroom.
That is, kill all tiny insects such as ants and bugs in your bathroom because they become food for centipedes, hence attracting the leggy critters.
In other words, when centipedes have a feast to enjoy, they will never stop coming to that place.
Henceforth, use pesticide spray to end all pests that offer nourishment to centipedes. When you do that, these unwelcome guests will starve and let the rest of their community know that your abode is out of bounds.
Also read: Silverfish in Bathroom – How to Get Rid of It?
Illuminate Your Bathroom
Many people like to have dim lighting in their bathroom for ambiance to enjoy a long warm after a stressful day at work.
Due to this, they install dimmable mood lights in their bathroom, which make their bathroom welcoming for not just them but also centipedes.
Insects prefer darkness, so if you provide them with a dimly lit area, they will come running to settle in their new home.
Simply put, stick to regular bright LED lights in your bathroom instead of mood lighting.
Put Lemongrass
Lemon grass or citronella is a natural repellant for most insects, and centipedes are no different.
Leave lemon grass leaves close to dark recesses to shoo away centipedes that try to make their way into your bathroom.
As mentioned above, centipedes love damp, dark places and typically enter through tiny holes and gaps in the walls; place citronella near such areas.
When you do that, the strong smell wafting from lemongrass will scare all the little elongated creatures who trespass into your territory.
If you don’t want to put raw lemongrass bits in your bathroom, you can purchase citronella products, such as sprays from the market to scare off centipedes.
Put Pandan Or Screwpine Leaves
Pandan, fragrant screwpine, or vanilla grass is another effective organic repellant to keep centipedes at bay. It is a powerfully aromatic plant that drives insects away.
If you can’t find lemongrass, you can use pandan leaves to do the job. Place the plant bits in corners and crannies around your bathroom, and let the scent spread.
Once that happens, all centipedes will retreat, and you will have a pest-free bathroom.
You may not be comfortable putting pandan leaves directly onto the bathroom floor, so keep them in small open containers and place those next to the problem areas (entry points of centipedes),
Use Essential Oils
Centipedes are uncomfortable around strong scents, to the point that they feel suffocated and die.
For this reason, powerfully scented products work like magic in keeping these elongated critters away.
With that in mind, you can pour a few drops into the corners of your bathroom and let the aroma do its job. You can also light some incense sticks infused with essential oils to fend off centipedes.
Doing so will not only make your space pest-free but also add beauty to it.
If you enjoy having a pleasant ambiance in your bathroom and don’t want it to be marred due to pandan leaves or drops of essential oil, you can use scented incense to get rid of approaching centipedes.
Keep Your Bathroom Clean
It goes without saying that insects love to dwell in dirty places. That means if you leave your bathroom and the area around it untidy, you will provide an excellent breeding ground for centipedes.
Therefore, be sure to deep clean your bathroom and the space around it.
Moreover, keep the rest of your house tidy too so that centipedes don’t settle in any other places because if that happens, they can easily enter your bathroom as well.
Bear in mind that when cleaning your bathroom, you leave it dry after you are done with the tidying routine, or else the moisture left behind will attract centipedes.
Wipe off the water and turn on the ventilation to dry your bathroom quickly.
Also, if you have leaks in the bathroom, such as a leaking pipe or faulty faucet that may be dripping water that seeps into the spaces between tiles, fix those immediately.
Doing so will tackle the dampness and shoo away all centipedes trying to take over your bathroom.
With all that said, sometimes precautionary measures may not be enough to scare centipedes away from a bathroom. In that case, you need to bring out the big guns and kill the tiny elongated slithering monsters.
Killing Centipedes
The easiest way to kill centipedes is by spraying pesticides in the corners of your bathroom. You can find many formulas to do so on the market. Buy one of those and get to work.
Once you have doused every nook and cranny of your bathroom in pesticide spray, let the chemical do its job and not use the bathroom for a while.
After a considerable amount of time has passed, only then use the bathroom.
Furthermore, when you enter your bathroom, open the windows and turn on the ventilation system because the strong scent of such sprays can be harmful to your lungs.
Besides that, it may affect other respiratory organs as well, so be sure to cover your nose and mouth when entering a bathroom that’s been sprayed with a pesticide solution.
Apart from store-bought products, you can try home remedies to eradicate centipedes.
Sprinkle Salt
Salt is not only effective in warding off demons but also centipedes! Sprinkle a generous amount of salt in places in your bathroom regularly frequented by centipedes.
Leave the white condiment to do its work for a few hours or even overnight. The next day, wash it away with warm water.
Always use warm water to rinse all kinds of sludge as it is antiseptic, so it renders every surface pathogen-free.
Put Moth Balls
As strange as it may sound, the perfume from moth balls can be comforting for many people, but it’s certainly not so for centipedes.
That’s right! Many people enjoy smelling the scent that comes from naphthalene balls, so put those around your bathroom. They will bring a peculiarly pleasant fragrance into your bathroom and kill centipedes.
Mothballs produce a gas poisonous to centipedes, which is why when they inhale the air around naphthalene balls, they don’t survive.
Therefore, place a handful of mothballs in a petri dish or small container and keep it next to tiny openings that let centipedes in your space.
Set Sticky Traps
Besides pesticide sprays, sticky insect traps are incredibly effective in killing the leggy lodgers that encroach bathrooms.
If you want to get rid of the elongated occupants residing in your bathroom rent-free, purchase sticky traps online or from a brick and mortar store and set them in multiple spots.
Soon after, you will see centipedes stuck to the adhesive bug trap.
Such off-the-counter products can offer a greater sense of peace as you get to see the lifeless bodies of centipedes stuck to the trap surface.
So, if you want to witness the end of centipedes, get your hands on any adhesive trap to kill centipedes.
Keep in mind that there are many similar products available on the market that are suited for other insects such as cockroaches, spiders, crickets, etc. Therefore, make sure to pick the right article.
Ending Note
While centipedes are not necessarily harmful to humans, they can bite and make you squirm in uneasiness. That is why we want to get rid of these leggy lodgers as quickly as possible.
If you want to do that too, employ any of the tricks mentioned in the article and make your bathroom free of centipedes.
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