How to Get Rid of Silverfish in Your Home Like a Pro

You might panic when you spot silverfish rapidly moving in your carpet, papers, and fabrics, but don’t fret—there are lots of ways to keep these pests out of your home for good. The long, wingless, and silvery-gray soft-bodied insect won’t sting or bite you, but they feed on starches and sugars, leading them to feed on papers and fabrics in your house.

“Silverfish tend to prefer starchy foods and can readily feed on boxes, papers, sawdust, and more,” Scot Hodges, the vice President of professional development and technical Services at Arrow Exterminators, says. “Large book collections can be damaged by silverfish due to feeding on pages, and the glue used in binding them.”

So, how can you keep these insects out of your space? We spoke with Hodges and two other pest control experts to find out how to make your home silverfish-free.

5 Reasons Silverfish Enter Your Home

• Humidity. Silverfish thrive in hot, humid environments with a lot of moisture.
• Cracks and gaps in the foundation. Whether your house is new or a bit older, the insect can crawl into these spaces to get inside your house. “In newer homes, they may find their way in during the construction process, and get closed into the home during the finishing process,” Hodges says.
• Unsealed windows, screens, and doors. Similarly, silverfish can find their way into these crevices as well. “Their bodies are such that they’re very thin and oval horizontally, and they’ve evolved to that over these millions of years, because that allows them to slip into any crack or crevice and remain hidden and protected,” Trenton Frazer, the lead entomologist at Aptive Pest Control, says.
• Infested papers or fabrics. Bringing in these materials, including books and cardboard boxes, could introduce them to your space.
• Lots of stored items in a basement or attic. That book collection or set of old scrapbooks might be serving as a starchy food source and a humid environment for the bug.

Want more cleaning and organizing tips? Sign up for our free daily newsletter for the latest hacks, expert advice, and more!

4 Signs You May Have a Silverfish Problem

• You’re seeing silverfish around the house. The insect is nocturnal, so you may see it move around at night in dark areas like closets, corners, bathrooms, and basements.
• You’re finding damage. When there’s an infestation, you’ll likely notice holes or tears in items like cardboard, papers, and fabrics.
• There are yellow stains. This comes from when the insect sheds its scales, and you’ll find them in the dark crevices where the silverfish like to hide, according to Joe Malinowski, the vice president of pest management for Mosquito Authority and Pest Authority.
• There are small black dots. Silverfish excrement looks like pepper, and if there’s a major infestation, you’ll find it around your home.

How to Keep Silverfish Out of Your Home

Keeping silverfish out of the house and getting rid of them can be a challenge, considering their ability to enter the home through the smallest of cracks. Experts agree that one main way to keep them out of the house is to seal up any cracks, crevices, or gaps in screens.

“Sealing them is a great way to get ahead of unwanted visits from silverfish or other pantry pests,” Malinowski says. “Even baseboards can harbor silverfish if there are small spaces for them to slip through.”

Frazer highly recommends eliminating humidity in the infested areas using a dehumidifier to make your basement or attic less hospitable for the insect.

“They’re soft-bodied, so they’re very affected by the moisture levels of the air,” he says. “You’ll never see them where humidity drops below the threshold that’s required for a silver fish to retain the moisture sufficient to keep it alive.”

However, he advises that getting rid of the bug’s food source—which might be sentimental journals, books, or scrapbooks—isn’t entirely necessary. That’s because silverfish can survive a long time without food or water, so even if you disposed of those memories, it wouldn’t get rid of the infestation.

“It’s not a sanitation issue, so there shouldn’t be any guilt there,” he says. “They happen and they can be carried in…It goes back to just your traditional integrated pest management of making sure that you’re caulked, you’re screened, you’re sealed, and you keep your doors closed.”