How to Get Rid of Gnats: The Best Tips and Tricks for a Gnat-Free Home

Fungus gnats are the very bane of my existence. I have house plants and terrariums in every room, so I’ve dealt with my more-than-fair share of them. (When my bioactive rat enclosure got infested with gnats, I wanted to burn my house down. There is nothing worse.)

So if you’re suffering with a gnat problem right now, you have my sincerest sympathies. Today we’re taking care of that for you. I have tried every gnat solution, so I’m going to give you an overview of what works and what doesn’t.

Here’s everything I’ve used to successfully kill and prevent gnats, the best traps, plus some homemade DIY solutions.

How to avoid household gnats.

Maybe you want to get ahead of the game, or make sure this doesn’t happen again. Here are some top tips for keeping your home free of fungus gnats and fruit flies.

1. Avoid overwatering plants

Fungus gnats are attracted to what grows in damp potting soil (fungus, imagine that). If the top of your plant pots doesn’t dry out quickly enough, you’ll almost definitely get gnats. To prevent them, don’t overwater your plants. Allow the top inch to dry out before watering again.

Additionally, you can bottom water your plants to keep the top of the soil less saturated. Plants usually prefer bottom watering anyway.

Gnats can also gather at the bottom of pots, especially if you’ve got them in a water catcher. To avoid them here, allow your plants to fully drain for a few hours before returning them to their dish. You can also wipe the bottom of the pot dry and sprinkle a little cinnamon to prevent fungus growth.

As a treatment or preventative, consider watering plants with mosquito bit tea–more on that later.

2. Clean up food residue

Keep your counters, stove, and sink wiped down and clear of food residue so the little suckers don’t get a free lunch.

Also be sure to clean drains and disposals regularly, as these are great breeding grounds for all sorts of small bugs.

3. Drain standing water

Many little bugs are attracted to standing water to lay their eggs and hydrate, so be sure you don’t leave any lying around for them. A common enemy here are dishes you might leave soaking overnight. Try to keep up with your daily dishes to prevent pests.

4. Rinse banana stems

Fruit flies typically invade your home via bananas. They love to lay eggs on a banana peel and hang out under the stems, so give your bunch a good rinse when you bring them home to avoid fruit flies altogether.

5. Take out garbage regularly

The trashcan holds a lot of yummy treats for all kinds of insects and pests, so remove trash often, and if you have something particularly grody, like meat scraps, dispose of them appropriately.

How to dispose of meat without attracting bugs:

• Throw it out in sealed containers, like you would with cooking oil
• Keep meat scraps in the freezer until you’re taking out the trash (or save them to make broth)
• Take it directly to your outside garbage bin
• Feed to dogs or pigs, or compost (yes, you can compost meat–you just have to do it carefully)

6. Act fast

As soon as you see one gnat, know that there are dozens more. Start treatment as soon as possible to avoid a few gnats turning into So Many Gnats.

Fungus gnats vs Fruit flies

Fungus gnats and fruit flies look similar, but you need to determine which you have, as both are dealt with in unique ways.

Fungus gnats love, you guessed it, fungus. You’ll find these bugs most often around houseplants and drains. They resemble mosquitoes and tend to be a bit larger than fruit flies.

via The Environmental Factor

Fruit flies love, you guessed it, fruit. Anything with sugar will attract these guys. Common areas for fruit flies to hang out are around fruit (especially overripe fruit), the trashcan, and sink drains. They’re smaller than fungus gnats and closer resemble a common housefly. 

via Tarro

The important difference:

• Fruit flies are attracted to sweetness
• Fungus gnats are attracted to fungus, usually in damp soil

This distinction dictates the steps to rid your home of them.

How to get rid of gnats.

I wouldn’t wish a fungus gnat infestation on my worst enemy. They’re irritating, they multiply like nobody’s business, and they eat plant roots! They can feel impossible to get rid of.

To thoroughly rid your house of its gnat problem, it’s best to target both adult gnats in the air, and the eggs and larvae in the soil.

To get rid of gnats, follow the above prevention protocols to prevent them accumulating faster, then choose one of the below solutions to get rid of gnats for good.

Best sticky traps for kitchen gnats.

Sticky traps are great for dealing with adult gnats. The more you can snatch, the less they can breed.

Yellow gnat traps

The classic yellow gnat traps work pretty well for the price. I find the best results when you nestle it down closely to the soil. The yellow color attracts them, then if they sit still for a few seconds, they aren’t able to leave.

Light traps

A step up from the yellow sticky traps are light traps. They also use adhesive sheets, with the addition of a blue light. This calls in flying insects. For some reason.

I’ve tried several light traps, and here’s what I have found works best.

Zevo flying insect trap.

This one had the strongest glue of all I’ve tried–if a gnat steps foot on it, it’s not leaving. With other sticky traps, you’ll see that they walk on, and if they’re quick, they can walk right back off. Most of the glue sheets just aren’t strong enough to grab them if they don’t hang around for a second.

These Zevo traps use a thick, strong glue to catch bugs the first time.

Here’s a little sample of what my Zevo caught this week:

But the most effective method I’ve found, regardless of which light trap I was using, is what I’ve called the Cube of Despair.

First step: I use an extension cord to drop the traps right on top of my problem area (my giant plant pots), because this allows you to catch both flying gnats and the younger gnats (who just walk right onto it).

Second step: I use two lights facing each other, then build little walls to create a sick insect night club that they just can’t resist.

It’s a real Hansel and Gretel situation. It just looks so fun. They don’t stand a chance.

Cuter traps

If you’re resistant to bug traps because they ruin your kitchen aesthetic, I get that! Here are a few less obvious/ugly options.

Terro Fruit Fly Trap

This is a pretty cute one! It looks like a little apple, and it discreetly kills gnats inside. This only works for fruit flies. They’re attracted to the liquid inside, enter through the holes, then drown inside. RIP.

The included vial of liquid smells exactly like vinegar with a few drops of dish soap, so you can easily make your own replacement liquid.

It’s just a cuter execution of the popular apple cider vinegar and dish soap solution.

We The Wild Sticky Trap

You’ve probably seen the classic yellow stickies. I’ve used them often, and they work swell if you get a brand with strong adhesive.

But for a more attractive solution, try these We The Wild stickies. They’ll snatch up fungus gnats near the surface of your plant soil (where gnats love to hang out), without the neon yellow shapes covered in bug corpses for all to see.

Just a little demure, a little cutesy. This set also comes with a very cute case to keep them in:

Kill gnat larvae and eggs with Mosquito Bits.

To fully eliminate gnats quickly, you’ll also want to attack the babies in the soil of your house plants.

Mosquito bits are traditionally used to prevent mosquito larvae from becoming adults in still water–like in a yard pond.

To use them in soil, we have to make a “tea”. Soak the specified amount of bits in hot water for 3-12 hours. Strain out the bits–or wrap them up in cheesecloth beforehand for easy removal like a tea bag.

Then water your plants as normal with the tea. This liquid will stop gnats from reaching adulthood, kicking a hole right in that life cycle.

Using this along with traps for adults will greatly control the population, hopefully leading to a quick extinction.

Homemade gnat traps.

Here are a few homemade gnat traps DIY ideas to kill and deter gnats.

Apple cider vinegar (fruit flies)

People love recommending this trap, but please keep in mind that it works for fruit flies, not fungus gnats. Both bugs are attracted to different things.

All you do is:

• Find a container with a wider base than opening
• Add a few drops of dish soap (this lowers the surface tension of the liquid, allowing bugs to fall in and drown)
• Finish off with apple cider vinegar
• Plastic wrap the top and poke a few tiny holes in it with a toothpick

The idea is the apple cider vinegar attracts the bugs, they slip into the holes, then aren’t able to climb back out, drowning to death. RIP.

You can substitute the vinegar for red wine, if you’re feeling fancy. Some people use rotting fruit to attract fruit flies into drowning in the liquid of their choice. Very cute.

Candle trap (fungus gnats and fruit flies)

I’m not necessarily recommending this one, since it’s a bit impractical, but I did try it, and it was vindicating after a month of full-out war against swarms of fungus gnats.

If you have many gnats in your house, try lighting a few candles in the dark. The light of the candle will attract them, and they’ll fly into the flame, dying a devastating and fiery death.

They make little sizzling sounds. It’s kind of morbid. This is more of a therapeutic activity for those of us at the end of our ropes, rather than a truly effective solution.

Diluted bleach (fungus gnats and fruit flies)

Pour diluted bleach down your sink drains, because gnats love to hang out in there. This will clear out a lot of them and ruin their favorite hiding spot. Suckersssss.

Relocate spiders (fungus gnats and fruit flies)

I’m very pro-house spider, and if you are too, here’s a hot tip: Relocate spiders to your gnat-heavy areas. I’ll drop spiders into my houseplants–there’s enough food for them even without an infestation. They’re happy, I’m happy, and the plants are happy.

If you’re squeamish around spiders, I recommend looking at this video of a very cute jumping spider asking for uppies. Jumpers are a great gateway spider.

Hydrogen peroxide (fungus gnats)

Dilute some hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle, then wet the top layer of soil. Use this strategically! If you only have fungus gnats in one controlled area, DO NOT USE THIS.

Basically, they hate it. They won’t lay their eggs in peroxide, and some people say it kills the eggs that are there.

But!!!

If you ruin their environment, that just means they’ll seek another one, spreading around your house like a plague.

So if you want to get strategic with it, and you already have gnats everywhere, you might try mosquito bits in a plant or two and hydrogen peroxide in the rest, chasing everyone into the mosquito bit dirt, where their larvae won’t be able to transition into adulthood.

Cruel, cruel world.

Combat bugs with more bugs.

This is a little out-of-the-box, but hear me out: Springtails. What are they?

Springtails are tiny little white bugs that you’ve probably seen many times if you’re a regular gardener. They’re part of the classic “clean-up crew” for terrariums and other bioactive enclosures. They will out-compete the pants off of fungus gnats, keeping your houseplants free of the flying bothers.

via Terrarium Tribe

I had one large plant pot that I could not keep the fungus gnats away from. Until I introduced a springtail colony. They’re self-contained–you won’t see them escaping your soil to spread around the house–and they’re a permanent solution to your gnat problem as long as they’re there.

This might make some people feel squeamish, and if that’s you, this might not be your solution! But…it works. I much prefer my little springtails over a fungus gnat infestation.

Best way to get rid of gnats.

To sum up, here’s what I’ve had the most luck with:

1. Any sticky blue light traps set up in a cube

2. Mosquito bit soil treatments every 2 weeks

3. Relocating my house spiders to problem areas

4. Bottom watering plants

5. Moving in a springtail colony

If the above solutions don’t work for you, I recommend ringing up a professional pest control company. This is usually a problem we can handle from the inside, but it’s not worth losing your mind over!

To further avoid kitchen pests of all sorts, learn to store your food properly! Check out this free guide on how to store basic kitchen items in a way that keeps them fresh longer while hiding them away from critters: