How to get rid of mosquitoes, indoors and out: what works, and what only looks like it does

The reliable way to get rid of mosquitoes is not a product. It is two habits: remove the standing water they breed in, and put a physical barrier between the insect and your skin. Everything else, from repellents to coils to gadgets, ranges from a useful supplement to pure theatre. If you do only the two habits, you will have fewer mosquitoes than a neighbour who buys everything else.

That is the whole answer, and the rest of this guide is why. We are going to be blunt about the products that do not work, because the mosquito-protection aisle sells a great deal of confidence and not much protection, and someone should say so plainly.

First, understand what you are fighting

A mosquito's entire early life happens in water. The female lays her eggs in or beside standing water; the larvae live in it; only the adult flies. This is the weak point in the whole operation. No adult mosquito was ever born without a small pool of still water somewhere nearby, and the container-breeding species that now dominate European towns, above all the Asian tiger mosquito, will use astonishingly little of it: a plant saucer, a bottle cap, the tray under a pot (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Aedes albopictus factsheet). The tiger mosquito also rarely flies more than a couple of hundred metres in its life, which means the ones biting you were almost certainly bred within sight of where you are standing.

That single fact is the good news. You do not have to clear a region of mosquitoes. You have to clear your own few square metres, and you have far more power over that than any spray does.

How to get rid of mosquitoes outside

1. Empty every container of standing water, once a week. This is the most effective single action, and it costs nothing.

Walk your garden, balcony or terrace once a week and tip out anything holding water, then scrub it, because eggs cling to the sides above the waterline and survive a simple pour-out. The usual suspects:

• plant saucers and pot trays
• blocked gutters and downpipes
• watering cans, buckets and wheelbarrows
• children's toys, sandpit covers, tarpaulins and folds in pool covers
• birdbaths (refresh weekly), pet bowls, and the drip tray under an air-conditioning unit
• old tyres, and any forgotten container behind the shed

For water you cannot remove, such as a water butt, fit a fine mesh cover so females cannot reach the surface to lay. This one weekly walk does more than every gadget on this page combined, because it removes the next generation before it can fly.

2. Put barriers where you actually sit and sleep.

You cannot screen a whole garden, but you can screen the places you spend time. Fitted insect screens on doors and windows keep mosquitoes out of the house entirely; a netted enclosure protects a patio, a bed or a pram. The mesh has to be genuinely fine, because the tiger mosquito is small and a coarse weave built for larger night-flying mosquitoes lets it through, a failure we set out in detail in how to tell a net that works from one that only looks like it does and in screen doors and windows.

3. Understand what the yard gadgets actually do, which is less than the box implies.

Here is where the honesty has to be uncomfortable, because these are the products people reach for first.

Bug zappers are close to useless against mosquitoes, and worse than useless for the garden generally. The American Mosquito Control Association summarises the controlled studies bluntly: mosquitoes made up only 4.1% and 6.4% of a zapper's catch across an entire season, and there was no significant difference in the number of mosquitoes in yards with a zapper versus without one (American Mosquito Control Association FAQ). What the zapper mostly kills is moths, beetles and other harmless night insects, including the ones that pollinate and the ones that eat mosquitoes. You are electrocuting the wrong insects.

Ultrasonic repellers, the plug-in boxes and phone apps that claim to drive mosquitoes off with sound, do nothing at all. The same association reports that at least ten studies found ultrasonic devices have "no repellency value whatsoever" (AMCA FAQ). This is one of the most thoroughly disproven consumer products in the category, and it keeps selling.

Foggers and space sprays knock down the adult mosquitoes that happen to be flying at that moment, and then wear off. They do not touch the larvae in the water, so the population refills within days, and repeated use drives insecticide resistance and kills pollinators and other beneficial insects along the way. A fog is a reset button, not a solution, and pointing it at the symptom while the breeding water sits untouched is exactly backwards.

If a still evening on the terrace is the problem, a simple outdoor fan helps more than most of these: mosquitoes are weak fliers, and a steady breeze across a seating area genuinely makes it harder for them to land on you.

How to get rid of mosquitoes inside the house, naturally

"Naturally" usually means "without spraying chemicals in my home," and the good news is that the most effective indoor methods use no chemicals at all.

1. Find the indoor water. Mosquitoes breed indoors too, in the saucer under a houseplant, the tray of a self-watering pot, a vase of cut flowers left too long, a rarely used sink or floor drain, a dehumidifier reservoir. Empty and refresh these, and the indoor supply of new mosquitoes stops.
2. Screen the openings. A fitted screen on the windows you open is the single best indoor defence, because it stops mosquitoes coming in rather than chasing them once they have.
3. Protect the bed. A correctly specified net over the bed is the oldest and still one of the most reliable methods there is: it removes the bite where you are most exposed and least able to swat, and it uses nothing but fabric. A ceiling or bedside fan does double duty, cooling the room and disrupting the mosquito's approach.
4. Deal with the one already in the room. When a mosquito is loose indoors, the low-tech methods win. Turn off the lights and use a torch or phone screen to find it resting on a wall, often low and in a shaded corner, and remove it. It does not require a chemical.

Notice what is not on this list: no coil, no plug-in, no ultrasonic box. They are absent because the methods that work indoors are barrier and source-removal, and the chemical devices bring tradeoffs that the barrier does not.

What repels mosquitoes on the skin, and what does not

For the skin a barrier cannot cover, use a proper repellent and know what it is for. Repellents containing DEET or picaridin genuinely work and rank among the most effective options tested, with DEET giving the longest protection in head-to-head trials (Fradin and Day, New England Journal of Medicine, 2002); IR3535 and refined oil of lemon eucalyptus (PMD) are also recognised active ingredients (US EPA, skin-applied repellents). These are effective, and they are a supplement rather than a barrier: the protection ends the moment you forget to reapply, which is why they belong on exposed skin during the hours a screen cannot cover, not at the centre of your defence. We spell this out in DEET and picaridin: effective, but not a barrier.

What does not reliably repel mosquitoes is the home-remedy shelf. Repellent plants such as citronella or lavender release too little active compound at any useful distance to protect you, and home-made essential-oil sprays lose what little effect they have within minutes. Public-health bodies are explicit that the effectiveness of unregistered natural products is unknown, so they are not the thing to rely on (CDC Yellow Book).

The products we will not be polite about

A short, honest tour of the aisle, because these are sold as protection and mostly are not:

• Mosquito coils burn an insecticide indoors along with a great deal of smoke. One study found a single coil can release as much fine particulate (PM2.5) as burning between 75 and 137 cigarettes, a real respiratory tradeoff you are buying along with the marginal effect (Liu et al., Environmental Health Perspectives, 2003). More on this in what is actually in a mosquito coil.
• Citronella and scented candles deliver ambience, not an outdoor shield. The comparative repellent research puts their real-world protection close to nothing (Fradin and Day, NEJM 2002). See do citronella candles work.
• Plug-in vaporisers release a continuous, poorly characterised chemical load into sealed rooms in exchange for convenience: plug-in vaporisers in sealed rooms.
• Bug zappers and ultrasonic devices we have already covered: one kills the wrong insects, the other does nothing at all (AMCA FAQ).
• Uncertified marketplace nets are the purest illusion: a barrier is the right idea, but a coarse-mesh, unrated, unauthorised net over a gap the mosquito flies through is the appearance of protection over an open door (uncertified marketplace nets).

None of these is a scandal in isolation. Together they explain why so many households spend money every summer and still get bitten: the effort goes into the theatre and skips the water and the barrier.

What we know

The one rule that puts it all in order

If you remember one thing, make it this: you cannot spray your way out of a breeding problem. No coil, fog, zapper or candle drains the saucer of water that is making the mosquitoes. Only removing the water does that, and only a barrier keeps the survivors off your skin. Put your first hour of effort into the standing water and the screens, add a proper repellent for exposed skin, and let the gadgets stay on the shelf where their marketing lives.

If the mosquitoes around you bite in daylight and go for your ankles, read the Asian tiger mosquito guide next, and if you are already dealing with the bites, why mosquito bites itch and how to stop it covers the aftermath. You can also check how far the tiger mosquito has spread in your region on the Mosticare threat map.

Sources: ECDC Aedes albopictus factsheet | American Mosquito Control Association FAQ | Fradin and Day, NEJM 2002 | Liu et al., Environmental Health Perspectives 2003 | CDC Yellow Book | US EPA, Skin-Applied Repellent Ingredients

This article is general information, not medical or pest-control advice. For an infestation or a disease concern, consult a qualified professional.