How to Get Rid of Roaches
Get rid of roaches by identifying the species, removing food and water, sealing entry points, and placing bait and boric acid. Sticky traps show when it is working and when to call a professional.
You will end up with a home that gives roaches no food, no water, and no way in, bait placed where they hide, and sticky traps that show whether the numbers are falling.
Cockroaches carry bacteria onto food and utensils, and their droppings and shed skins contain allergens that make allergy and asthma symptoms worse. In the Census Bureau's 2019 American Housing Survey, residents of about 14 million housing units said they had seen roaches in the previous 12 months, out of roughly 124 million occupied units. That is about 1 home in 9.
Cleaning, sealing, and baiting are the do-it-yourself plan. UC IPM, the University of California pest program, says you can manage cockroaches on your own in some cases, while serious infestations often require a professional. Step 8 says when to make that call. If you share walls with neighbors, roaches move between units, so bring in your landlord and your neighbors from the start.
Sticky glue traps (for identification and monitoring) Flashlight Vacuum (with a HEPA filter if anyone in the home has asthma) Silicone caulk and a caulk gun Copper mesh or steel wool (for larger gaps) Rubber drain covers or metal drain screens Bait stations or gel bait in a syringe Boric acid powder Airtight food storage containers Dehumidifier (optional, for damp areas)
Figure out what kind of roach you are dealing with
Before you do anything else, you need to know which species has moved in. The approach that works for German cockroaches (the small light-brown ones with two dark stripes behind their head) is different from what works for American cockroaches (the big reddish-brown ones that come up through drains). Place a few sticky glue traps in dark areas where roaches are likely hiding: under the kitchen sink, behind the refrigerator, along bathroom baseboards, and near any pipes that enter the wall. Check the traps every morning for a few days. German cockroaches are the most common species in houses and apartments throughout the United States, according to Penn State Extension. They are about 1/2 inch long and stay close to kitchens and bathrooms. American cockroaches are the largest household species, 1.5 to 2 inches long, and stay in hot, damp parts of the home such as basements. The National Pesticide Information Center page on cockroaches has an Images tab with photographs of the different species and their life stages. Compare them with what is on your trap. The page also gives an example of why the species matters. Limiting moisture can deter German cockroaches, while American cockroaches call for adjusting both temperature and humidity.
Good to know: If you cannot match what is on the trap, take the trap or a clear photo to your local county extension office. The National Pesticide Information Center recommends the extension office for help identifying cockroaches, and its agents answer pest control questions for your area.
Deep clean your kitchen and bathroom
Roaches stay where they find food and water, and a clean home can still have both. Take both away. Start with the kitchen. Pull the stove and refrigerator away from the wall and clean the grease, crumbs, and spills that have built up behind and underneath them. Wipe down the inside of cabinets. Clean grease off the range hood and vent filters. Store all open food in airtight containers. Roaches can chew through paper, cardboard, and thin plastic bags, so cereal boxes and chip bags are easy targets. Transfer anything that is not sealed into glass or hard plastic containers with tight-fitting lids. Take the garbage out every evening and use bins with lids that close properly. Do not leave dirty dishes in the sink overnight. Pick up pet food and water bowls before you go to bed. In the bathroom, wipe down counters and clean around the base of the toilet. Roaches eat soap, toothpaste, and hair as well as food. Finish by vacuuming the cracks and crevices in both rooms, including any droppings, dead roaches, and egg cases. The National Pesticide Information Center notes that cockroaches are attracted to their own debris. If anyone in the home has asthma, use a vacuum with a HEPA filter, as Penn State Extension advises.
Cut off their water supply
Roaches need water as much as they need food, so the moisture goes next. Fix any leaky pipes or dripping faucets. Check under every sink in the house, around the base of toilets, and near the washing machine. A slow drip is a steady water supply. Dry out your sinks and bathtub before bed. Wipe them down so there is no standing water overnight, which is when roaches are most active. If you have a damp basement or bathroom, use a dehumidifier or improve ventilation. Oriental cockroaches in particular live in cool, damp places such as wet basements.
Good to know: Check your refrigerator drip pan. It sits underneath the fridge and collects condensation, which makes it a reliable water source for roaches. Pull the fridge out and empty it.
Seal every entry point you can find
An adult German cockroach can hide in a crack 1/16 inch wide, by UC IPM's measure. Walk through your home with a flashlight and look for cracks and openings, especially in the kitchen and bathroom. Use silicone caulk to seal cracks around cabinets, baseboards, window frames, and door frames. Pay close attention to the gaps where pipes and wires pass through walls. These are highways for roaches moving between rooms and apartments. For larger gaps around pipes, stuff them with copper mesh or steel wool first, then caulk over the top. Check exterior entry points as well. Screen your vents, repair any torn window screens, and make sure your door sweeps sit flush against the threshold. American cockroaches come up through floor drains, so fit rubber drain covers or metal drain screens over them. Penn State Extension gives the same list for keeping roaches from getting back in, and adds backsplashes, crawl spaces, and cables to the places to check.
Set out bait stations and gel bait
Baits are the treatment to lead with. UC Integrated Pest Management states it plainly. Baits give better control than sprays, and insecticide sprays do not provide long-term control. It also warns that pesticides alone will not solve a cockroach problem without the cleaning and sealing above. Read the label before you place anything. Wherever children or pets can reach, use enclosed bait stations in place of open dots of gel, because the insecticide stays inside a tamper-resistant container. A bait is a slow-acting insecticide mixed with food. The University of Kentucky's cockroach elimination fact sheet describes what happens next. A roach eats the bait, crawls away, and dies, typically within 1 to 3 days. Roaches that never touched the bait can die too, after picking up traces of the insecticide from the droppings of the ones that did. Apply small pea-sized dots of gel bait in cracks, crevices, and corners where you have seen roach activity or found droppings. Focus on the kitchen: behind the stove, under the sink, inside cabinet hinges, along the gap where the counter meets the wall, and around the dishwasher. Push bait stations flush against corners and the edges of cabinets, because those are the paths roaches travel. Use many small dots in place of a few large ones. Roaches are not drawn to bait from a distance. They come across it while foraging, so every extra placement raises the odds that they find it. The cabinets under one kitchen sink can take more than a dozen dots. Reapply gel that has hardened and replace stations that are empty. Step 7 covers what to do if the bait stops working.
Heads up: Do not spray insecticide or cleaning products around your bait. The University of Kentucky warns that either one can discourage roaches from taking it. UC IPM adds that aerosol sprays, foggers, and bug bombs can repel roaches and scatter them to other rooms without killing them.
Apply boric acid in cracks and wall voids
Boric acid has been registered as a pesticide in the United States since 1948. It works as a stomach poison. Roaches walk through it, get it on their legs and antennae, and ingest it when they groom themselves. It is slow. UC IPM puts it at 7 days or more before the population drops. Read the label before you open the container, and put the powder only where children and pets cannot reach it. According to the National Pesticide Information Center's boric acid fact sheet, people who have eaten boric acid have had nausea, vomiting, stomach aches, and diarrhea, and infants are more sensitive. Never apply it onto countertops or any surface used to prepare food. If you suspect a child has swallowed some, call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222. Apply a very thin layer of boric acid powder in dry, hidden areas where roaches travel. Think wall voids, under appliances, the gap between cabinets and the wall, and, with the breaker switched off first, the space behind electrical outlet covers. You want a barely visible dusting, not a pile. Roaches walk around thick deposits. Boric acid must stay dry to work. Do not apply it in wet areas like under sinks or in bathrooms where it will get damp. Use gel bait in those spots instead. If a deposit gets wet and cakes, clean it up and reapply.
Good to know: Diatomaceous earth is the other dust sold for roaches. It is not a poison. It dries insects out by absorbing the oils and fats from their outer shell. The University of Kentucky rates boric acid as the more effective of the two, and UC IPM notes that diatomaceous earth repels roaches, so apply it in wall voids and other out-of-the-way places, away from your bait. Buy a product labeled for insect control, keep it away from children and pets, and do not breathe the dust, which irritates the nose and eyes.
Monitor with sticky traps and adjust your approach
Set fresh sticky traps in the same spots you used in step 1. Check them weekly and write down how many roaches each one caught. The counts are how you measure whether the treatment is working. Give the bait time. UC IPM says it takes 7 days or longer before you see fewer cockroaches, and the University of Kentucky expects a substantial reduction within a few weeks. Counts that fall week over week mean the plan is working, so keep going. If the counts are not falling, work back through the earlier steps. Look for a food source you overlooked, a leak you did not fix, and gaps you did not seal. Then move bait closer to the traps that catch the most roaches, add more placements, and replace gel that has hardened. If the bait has not ended the catches within 30 days, Penn State Extension says to throw it out and replace it with a different brand. Pick one whose label lists a different active ingredient. That deals with resistance and with aversion, which is roaches avoiding a bait because of its flavor.
Call a professional if the problem persists
Call a licensed pest control professional if the traps are still catching roaches after you have switched baits in step 7, or if the infestation is heavy from the start. UC IPM says serious indoor infestations often require professional pest control. In an apartment or any multi-unit building, tell your landlord and your neighbors first. Roaches travel between units through shared walls, pipes, and wiring, and the National Pesticide Information Center is blunt about it. Nobody will be able to eliminate the problem alone. American and Oriental cockroaches live outdoors and in sewers, so bait in your kitchen does not reach where they breed. UC IPM's method for them is bait placed in water meter boxes and drains, plus treatment of their hiding sites when numbers are high. Hire that out if you cannot reach those places yourself. A professional also has tools you do not. UC IPM notes that some bait and dust products are sold only to licensed professionals, and that dusting inside hollow walls is a job that can require one. Ask how many follow-up visits are included and how the company will confirm the treatment worked. The EPA's Citizen's Guide to Pest Control and Pesticide Safety lists six questions to settle before you hire anyone. The first three are whether the company is licensed and its employees bonded, whether it will discuss the treatment it proposes, including the non-chemical alternatives, and whether its track record holds up when you research it yourself. Do not take the salesperson's word for that last one. The other three cover insurance, a guarantee, and membership in a professional association. The same guide says the most effective strategy may be to combine methods, an approach it calls integrated pest management, which emphasizes preventing pest damage.
Once the traps stop catching roaches, leave a few in place and keep checking them. UC IPM's advice is to continue monitoring on a regular basis to make sure a re-infestation is not taking place, and to keep up the cleaning and sealing that removed the food, water, and hiding places. If roaches turn up on the traps again, go back to the checklist in step 7. Look for a new leak, an unsealed gap, or bait that has hardened. In an apartment, roaches that keep returning mean the building needs treating, so go back to your landlord. If other pests are sharing the kitchen, our guides on how to get rid of ants and how to get rid of mice use the same cleaning and sealing.
Questions we get asked about this
Answers from experience, not a textbook.
It depends on the species, and a sticky trap settles it. German cockroaches live and breed only indoors, so a small light-brown roach in the kitchen did not wander in from the yard. American and Oriental cockroaches live outdoors and come inside from time to time, so one large roach can be a lone intruder. Set sticky traps where you saw it and check them daily for several days. UC IPM notes that traps often catch roaches within the first 24 hours. Roaches on the traps mean an established population, and that is the point to start on the steps above.
Cockroaches forage at night and hide in cracks during the day. Penn State Extension says they show up in the daytime when a heavy population is present or when something else is stressing them, such as a lack of food or water or a pesticide application. Daytime roaches before you have treated anything are a sign of a heavy infestation, so start the steps now and read step 8. Daytime roaches after you have cut off their food and water or put down bait can be that stress at work, so go by the trap counts in step 7.
Yes. UC IPM lists coliform bacteria, Staphylococcus, and Streptococcus among the organisms German cockroaches are believed capable of transmitting, and Salmonella and Shigella for American cockroaches, which pick them up in sewers. An indoor infestation also makes allergy and asthma symptoms worse. The National Survey of Lead and Allergens in Housing, published in Environmental Health Perspectives in 2005, found cockroach allergen at detectable levels in at least one room of an estimated 63% of U.S. homes. Detectable is a low bar. The same survey put 13% of kitchen floors above 2.0 units per gram, the level it ties to allergic sensitization, and about 10% above 8.0, the level it ties to worse asthma. The odds of the higher level were greatest in homes where roaches had been reported or seen. If someone in the house has asthma, clear the infestation and vacuum with a HEPA filter.
German cockroaches have the fastest reproductive cycle of the common pest species, according to UC IPM, which puts what a single female and her offspring can produce in a year at over 30,000. Penn State Extension gives a lower figure, over 10,000 descendants in a year assuming two generations, and the numbers behind it. Each capsule holds up to 48 eggs, usually 30 to 48. A female produces 4 to 8 capsules in her lifetime, about one every 6 weeks at room temperature, and a capsule takes about 28 days to hatch. On either figure, the time to act is when the first roaches show up on a trap.
German cockroaches do not. UC IPM classes them as a species that lives and breeds entirely indoors, so a population with food, water, and shelter stays and keeps breeding at the rate in FAQ 4. American and Oriental cockroaches live outdoors and invade only temporarily. They keep coming for as long as the way in stays open, so seal the gaps and cover the drains in step 4.
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