Your patio can be one of the most enjoyable areas in your home to use. When the weather is right, there is hardly a place that can provide rest and relaxation comparable to that of a patio. The atmosphere of these special spaces can quickly be undermined by unwanted guests. The presence of excessive amounts of bugs and insects are one of the best ways to make a patio area unusable. Putting some methods in place to keep pests away can help keep your outdoor living spaces serene and enjoyable. Here’s how to keep bugs away from your patio:

1. Keep Your Patio Clean

Keeping your patio area clean is one of the easiest preventive measures you can take to deter insects from joining. Ants and other bugs are quickly attracted to food crumbs, so be sure to keep the area swept.

Likewise, spilled liquids, especially things like sugary soft drinks, are magnets for many types of insects, including wasps and bees. Try to avoid the presence of buckets or out-of-use planters that will serve to hold standing water around this area of your home. These are prime areas for mosquitoes to utilize.

By keeping your patio free of food scraps, cleaning up liquid spills, and making sure nothing is collecting water, you can help make your patio a less attractive place for pests.

2. Add Bug-Repellant Plants

Making wise choices regarding the plants you use in your landscaping can go a long way towards helping to fight the volume of insects around the outside of your home. Some plant and flower species are more than aesthetic complements to the exterior of your home. Marigolds, chrysanthemums, types of mint, and even petunias are among a long list of plants that are known to have insect-deterrent capabilities.

3. Use Citronella Candles

Citronella has long been recognized as an insect deterrent. There are many options when it comes to incorporating citronella candles into the landscape around your patio. Tiki-style torches are a popular option, but even tabletop candles and larger, multi-wick candles that can be placed on the ground are viable options for patios. These all can serve to enhance the atmosphere of your patio area while they keep bugs at bay.

4. Mix up a Homemade Bug-Repelling Spray

A safe homemade option for keeping bugs and insects away is a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, water, and mint-flavored mouthwash. Mixing this solution and applying it to the ground and plants around your patio will have the effect of both killing insect larvae that have been laid on plant leaves as well as deterring adult insects from occupying the immediate area. This can be a great option for people who are allergic to citronella or just don’t like it.

5. Clean up Your Landscaping

Just as keeping your patio space clean is an easy and helpful way to reduce the number of insects that will join you during your quiet evening, keeping your landscaping cleaned up will have a similar effect.

Clean out flower beds so that old, dead vegetation and leaves are not creating a perfect environment for insects to propagate. Wet and damp environments are often havens for insect reproduction and will make your patio area a magnet for unwanted bugs and critters.

6. Switch Your Lighting

It is a well-known fact that bugs are attracted to light. However, the lighting options you choose will play a role in just how much bugs are attracted to your outdoor seating areas. This is one of the things to consider for a new patio and can make a big difference.

Consider choosing light bulbs that are yellow rather than bright white, as this color of lighting attracts fewer insects. LED lights, while saving energy, also do not emit light at the ends of the UV spectrum that is especially attractive to insects and so they may be a viable option for outdoor lighting as well.

7. Run a Fan

Getting air moving is a good way to keep insects at bay. Stale and stagnant air during balmy and humid nights provide mosquitos and other biting insects with a field day.

Just as a breezy night seems to keep the bugs away, running a fan, or having an outdoor fan of some kind permanently installed above your patio, is a fantastic way to create air movement that keeps bugs away without detracting from the atmosphere of the patio area.

8. Upgrade to a Patio Enclosure

One of the most fool-proof ways to ensure that you are able to enjoy the sights and sounds of the outdoors during some of the most relaxing hours of each day is to invest in a patio enclosure. Types of patio enclosures vary from vertical 4-track window designs to screened-in patios and more.

Each kind of design has its benefits and how you go about deciding the right project for your home should be largely determined by your intentions for the area and how you plan to utilize it. The best part is that these types of home improvements can also serve to increase the market value of your home.

As warmer weather approaches, knowing how to keep bugs away from your patio can help keep this space of your home enjoyable. Some of these are a quick five-minute remedy while others may take a little more foresight and planning. Plus, they are all ways to upgrade your patio.

If you’re thinking about transforming the patio area of your home into a more usable and enjoyable area, feel free to give one of our representatives a call at (717) 399-4708 to talk about enclosing your patio.