The two questions we get asked more than any other are 'will heat treatment damage my home?' and 'will it damage my electronics?'. Both are fair — a treatment cycle holds a whole room at 55–60°C for several hours, which is well above the temperature most of your day-to-day belongings ever see.
The reassuring part is that a professional treatment isn't a blunt oven. Room air is pushed to 55–60°C while thermal probes and infra-red cameras track dozens of points in real time. Technicians rotate soft furnishings, open drawers and re-aim air movers so heat penetrates the cold spots bed bugs hide in — mattress cores, sofa frames, skirting voids — without letting any single surface run away.
Wooden furniture, mattresses, upholstery, clothing, books and most plastics are all comfortable at treatment temperatures. Solid-wood joints, veneers and standard laminate all sit well within their manufacturers' service range. The only prep on furniture is loosening drawers, pulling items away from walls a few inches, and lifting cushions so hot air can circulate — which is exactly what you'd do anyway to make sure the bugs die.
Electronics are the item people worry about most. Modern TVs, laptops, games consoles, routers and smart speakers are rated for storage temperatures up to roughly 60°C and operating temperatures a little below that. Because a treatment is convective (moving air) rather than radiant (direct heat), electronics sit close to the room air temperature, not above it. We still ask you to power everything off before we arrive — a device that's already generating its own heat is the one thing that can push itself over the limit.
A short list of items we do ask you to remove before treatment day, because they don't tolerate sustained heat: aerosols and pressurised cans, candles and wax, chocolate and other soft foods, medication, vinyl records, oil paintings, live plants, lithium batteries, and any delicate soft plastics like fine collectibles. Everything on that list goes in the car or with a neighbour for the day; everything else stays exactly where it is.
The reason we insist on thermal monitoring on every job is that this is where uncontrolled 'DIY heaters hired from a tool shop' treatments go wrong. Without probes, cameras and a trained technician watching the numbers, hot spots build up next to the heater and cold spots survive on the far side of the room — you get both damage and bugs. With monitoring, every part of the room lands in the same narrow lethal window and stays there long enough to kill eggs.
In practical terms: leave the sofa where it is, leave the wardrobe full, unplug the TV and follow the short prep list. On treatment day the property is empty of people and pets for around eight hours, we run the cycle with continuous monitoring, and by evening the home is cool, chemical-free and safe to walk straight back into. If you have a specific item you're unsure about — a valuable instrument, a wine collection, an aquarium — tell us at the survey and we'll plan around it.