A lot of people don’t like spiders and seek out spider control in Niagara when they become nuisances. Can you use colour to repel spiders from your home? Are there some colours that spiders like or dislike more than others?

How Do Spiders See?

Spiders can have up to eight eyes, though some have fewer and certain species have none at all. There are usually two large primary eyes in front that spiders use to make out images and distinguish light from darkness. The smaller, secondary eyes are used mostly for detecting motion in the interest of avoiding predators. Spiders that actively hunt their prey, such as wolf spiders and jumping spiders, tend to have more acute vision than spiders that spin a web and wait for their prey to come to them.

Humans have trichromatic vision. The human eye is equipped with special photoreceptors called cones that are sensitive to blue, green, and red light. All the colours that you can perceive are combinations of those three wavelengths reflected off the objects around you, received by the cones and relayed to the brain, which interprets the data, by the optic nerve.

Spiders only have dichromatic vision, meaning that they can only see colours with shorter wavelengths, such as blue and green. Spiders can also see ultraviolet light, which is light with wavelengths so short that the human eye cannot perceive them.

How Do Spiders React to Different Colours?

Spiders can’t perceive colours with longer wavelengths, such as red, yellow, or orange, at all. Within the spectrum that is visible to the human eye, spiders can only see green and blue, and they react to these colours differently.

Green appears to be spiders’ favourite colour. This may be because green is the most prominent colour in their natural environment, which consists of trees and grass. Plants provide cover that helps to protect spiders from predators, so perhaps the colour green makes spiders feel safe even when they are out in the open.

By contrast, spiders seem to hate the colour blue, especially light blue. It is not completely clear why this is, but there are a couple of theories. Blue is the colour of the sky, and it may make spiders feel vulnerable to predators by making it seem that they are not under any protective cover.

Then again, maybe spiders’ dislike of blue doesn’t have anything to do with the colour at all. Blue tends to repel many of the insects that spiders feed on, including wasps, so maybe they don’t like it because it makes it harder for them to find a meal.

Can You Use Colours To Repel Spiders?

It certainly won’t do any harm if you try to repel spiders from your home by painting it blue. However, it may not be effective at repelling spiders.

For example, most of the spiders that are in your home were born there and have never been outside. Painting the exterior of your home blue may stop new spiders from coming in, but it won’t do anything to encourage the spiders that are already inside to leave. You could try painting all the interior walls in your house blue, but this could cost a lot of time and money and unless you really like blue, it may not be worth it in the long run. If conditions inside your home are otherwise favourable to spiders, they may find it easier to tolerate the colour they hate.

Why Should You Call Truly Nolen for Spider Control in Niagara?

Spiders have to feed on insects, so if you are seeing a lot of spiders in your home, you may have a bigger problem than you realize. Contact our Niagara location, and one of our technicians can assess your property and tailor a residential pest control plan specific to the problems you are experiencing with spiders and insects.