Every bed has dust mites. Yours, ours, the most expensive hotel suite in London. They are microscopic, they feed on the skin cells we all shed overnight, and a warm, slightly humid bed is the best habitat they will ever find. The difference between dust mites being a harmless fact of life and the reason you wake up congested every morning is not whether you have them. It is how you manage them.
This guide covers how to tell if dust mites are affecting your sleep, how to remove them from your mattress, pillows and bedding, and the barrier approach that keeps their numbers down permanently.
Contents
What Dust Mites Are, and Why Your Bed Suits Them
The Signs They're Affecting Your Sleep
How to Get Rid of Dust Mites in Your Bed
What Dust Mites Are, and Why Your Bed Suits Them
Dust mites are microscopic relatives of spiders, far too small to see without magnification. They do not bite, sting or burrow. They simply live in soft furnishings and eat shed skin cells, and the problem they cause is indirect: their droppings contain proteins that are a major trigger for allergies, asthma and eczema.
Your bed is their ideal home for three reasons:
• Food: you shed skin cells all night, every night, directly into the bedding.
• Warmth: your body heats the bed to their preferred temperature for eight hours at a stretch.
• Moisture: overnight sweat and breath keep the humidity in mattresses and pillows exactly where mites thrive.
That is why dust mite problems concentrate in mattresses, pillows and duvets rather than carpets or curtains. The bed is where the food, warmth and moisture all meet.
The Signs They're Affecting Your Sleep
Because mites don't bite, the evidence is allergic rather than visible. The tell-tale pattern is symptoms that are worst in bed and shortly after waking, then ease through the day:
• Morning congestion or sneezing fits that fade by mid-morning.
• Itchy or watery eyes on waking.
• Night time coughing or wheezing, particularly for asthma sufferers.
• Eczema flare-ups that improve when you sleep somewhere else.
That last one is the most useful test. If a week away consistently improves your symptoms and the first night home brings them back, your bedroom is the likely source. Persistent symptoms are worth discussing with a pharmacist or GP, but the bedroom-level fixes below help regardless.
How to Get Rid of Dust Mites in Your Bed
You will never remove every mite, and you don't need to. The goal is to knock the population down and then hold it down. The knock-down:
1. Wash bedding hot. 60 degrees kills mites; cooler washes mostly just relocate them. Check the label first - our guide to washing pillows properly covers which fills tolerate what, because memory foam must never go in the machine.
2. Freeze what can't be washed hot. Delicate items and children's soft toys can go in a sealed bag in the freezer for 24 hours, then a cool wash to remove the allergens.
3. Vacuum the mattress itself. The upholstery attachment, slowly, over the full surface and into the seams and border. Do the bed base too.
4. Air the bed daily. Throw the duvet back when you get up instead of making the bed immediately. Thirty minutes of airing lets moisture evaporate, and a drier bed supports fewer mites.
5. Drop the bedroom humidity. Ventilate daily, keep the door open where practical, and dry laundry somewhere else. Mites struggle in dry air.
The realistic goal: you are not sterilising the bed, you are managing a population. Hot washing kills the mites; a barrier stops the survivors reaching you.
The Barrier Method: Keeping Them Out
Washing is the reset. The barrier is what stops you having to do it constantly. The logic is simple: mites live in the mattress and pillow cores where you can't wash, so you put a washable layer between the core and you. The mites underneath are sealed away from their food supply, and the allergens stay off your skin and out of your airway.
A washable barrier between you and the mattress core is the single most effective long-term measure.
A proper mattress protector does this job for the biggest item in the room. The REM-Fit Tencel Cool Mattress Protector, a Good Housekeeping Winner in 2026, pairs a cooling Tencel surface with a waterproof membrane, which addresses both halves of the problem at once: the physical barrier keeps allergens off your skin and out of your airway, and the moisture that mites depend on never reaches the mattress core. The cooling surface earns its place here too, because a cooler, drier sleep surface is itself a worse habitat for mites.
The full range is in our mattress protector collection.
Round the barrier out with washable pillow covers, a weekly pillowcase wash, and the wider habits in our guide to minimising allergens in your bedroom.
Your Dust Mite Questions Answered
Can you see dust mites?
No. They are a fraction of a millimetre long and effectively invisible to the naked eye. Anything you can see crawling in your bed is something else.
Do dust mites bite?
No. They have no interest in living skin. The itching and irritation people attribute to bites is almost always an allergic reaction to the proteins in their droppings.
What temperature kills dust mites?
A 60 degree wash kills them reliably. Below that, washing removes allergens and some mites but leaves survivors, which is why the barrier approach matters more than any single wash.
Does an old mattress have more dust mites?
Generally yes. Years of accumulated skin cells and absorbed moisture make an older, unprotected mattress a far larger reservoir than a newer one kept under a washable protector from day one. It is one more reason to fit the protector with the new mattress rather than after the problem starts.
The short version
Wash hot, air the bed, keep the room dry, and put a washable barrier between you and the places you can't wash. The REM-Fit protector range is built around exactly that job.
