How to Get Rid of Fleas in Your Home & on Pets

Your cat’s been scratching nonstop. There are tiny bites around your ankles. And now you’ve spotted little dark specks jumping across your carpet. Yep—you’ve got fleas. If you’re working out how to get rid of fleas in your home and on your pets, the most important thing to know is this: you need to treat everything at the same time.

Fleas breed fast, and the ones you can actually see are only a tiny fraction of the problem. Let’s jump into some practical steps to get rid of a flea problem at home.

Why Fleas are so Hard to Shake

What most people don’t realise is that the adult fleas hopping around on your pet or carpet make up only a small amount of the total flea population in your home. The majority of the population are hiding as eggs, larvae, and pupae deep in your carpets, bedding, furniture, and between floorboards.

A single female flea can lay up to 50 eggs a day, which roll off your pet and scatter wherever they go—your couch, bedroom floor, the car, or even your laundry pile. And in our mild, humid climate, fleas can survive and breed year-round, not just in summer. That’s why a couple of fleas can become a full infestation before you even catch on to what’s happening.

How to Get Rid of Fleas on Your Pets

Treating your pets is always step one. Without an effective flea treatment for pets, you’re fighting a losing battle—your animals are essentially a walking buffet for fleas.

Talk to Your Vet

Your vet can recommend the right flea treatment for your pet’s species, size, and weight. Options include spot-on treatments, oral tablets, and flea collars. It’s important to use the correct product for your specific pet, as some ingredients that are safe for dogs are toxic to cats.

Treat Every Pet in Your Home

Even if you’ve only spotted fleas on one animal, chances are the others have picked them up too. Keep all your pets on a year-round treatment—it’s the single most effective way to prevent populations from spiralling out of control.

Don’t Skip the Winter

It takes temperatures around -1°C for five days straight to kill flea development stages. In New Zealand, our winter months don’t get cold enough to wipe out fleas naturally, so year-round flea treatment is essential for Wellington’s pets.

How to Get Rid of Fleas in Your Home

Once your pets are sorted, it’s time to go after the rest of the culprits hiding throughout your home.

Vacuum Everything

Vacuum your carpets, rugs, under furniture, between couch cushions, along skirting boards, and anywhere else your pets like to lie. Vacuuming picks up eggs, larvae, and flea dirt (which larvae feed on). After every vacuum, empty the contents into a sealed bag and put it straight in your outside rubbish bin.

Wash Bedding in Hot Water

Make sure to wash all pet bedding, blankets, throws, your own bedding, and any other furnishing your pets spend time on. Hot water kills fleas at every stage of their lifecycle.

Skip the Flea Bombs

Flea bombs and total-release foggers aren’t worth using. They release product into the air, which settles across every surface in the room—benchtops, toys, bedding—while very little of it reaches the floor and the bases of furniture where fleas and their eggs actually are. Even where it does land, it rarely settles at a strong enough concentration to kill anything. You end up contaminating your whole house and barely touching the problem.

The bigger issue with DIY flea treatment is that it doesn’t break the lifecycle. Killing the adults you can see feels like progress, but the eggs and pupae are untouched, and a new wave emerges a month or two later. Most people go through that cycle several times before realising the fleas never actually left.

Your pet’s flea treatment is essential and works well—it keeps fleas off your animals and stops them being reinfested. But it doesn’t remove fleas from the house. That takes a professional flea treatment across all your flooring and the bases of furniture, because fleas move fast and spot-treating one room just sends them somewhere else.

Don’t Forget Outdoors

Treat shady spots where your pets rest outside—under decks, garden edges, and sandy areas—as these are prime breeding spots for flea larvae. Keep your gardens tidy and discourage stray cats, possums, hedgehogs, and rodents from hanging around, as they also carry fleas.

Common Questions We Get About Fleas

How long does it take to get rid of fleas completely?

The full flea lifecycle can range from 2 weeks to several months, depending on conditions. You’ll likely still spot some fleas for a few weeks after treatment as pupae hatch into new adults.

Consistency is everything. Keep vacuuming, washing bedding, and staying on top of your pet’s flea treatments.

Can fleas be found in homes without pets?

They absolutely can. Fleas can get inside your home from visiting animals and even on your clothing. Properties that have been empty for months can suddenly have a flea outbreak when new tenants move in.

Dormant pupae can hatch in response to vibrations and body heat from new occupants. If you’re a property manager or Airbnb host, this is worth keeping in mind between tenancies—our guide on protecting your asset during a tenancy gap covers what to watch for.

Am I sure it’s fleas and not bed bugs?

It’s a fair question, and the two get mixed up often. Fleas bite around the ankles, lower legs and waist, and live in carpets and soft furnishings throughout the house. Bed bugs bite exposed upper body areas while you sleep and stay close to the bed. If you’re not certain, our guide on how to check for bed bugs walks through the differences.

Do natural flea remedies actually work?

When considering how to get rid of fleas in your home and on pets, peppermint, eucalyptus, and lavender oils might deter a few fleas temporarily, but they won’t eliminate an established infestation. If you’re dealing with more than the odd flea, you’ll need proper treatment products and a thorough cleaning routine to make any real progress.

Get Your Flea Problem Sorted with Combat Pest Control

Already tried the flea treatment for pets and cleaned your home top to bottom with no success? It might be time to call Combat Pest Control. Our residential flea treatments target every life stage in the hard-to-reach areas that DIY methods miss.

Book online today, and let’s get rid of fleas in your home for good.