Why the last treatment did not work
If you have had a kitchen sprayed and the cockroaches returned, the treatment was aimed at the wrong target. German cockroaches — the small tan ones that are almost always the species in UAE kitchens — live inside cavities: behind the cooker, inside the fridge motor housing, in the gap between cabinet and wall, in plumbing voids. Spraying kills the ones out on the surface and leaves the population intact.
It also makes things worse in one specific way. Some sprays cause the insects to scatter and establish new harbourage elsewhere, which is how a kitchen problem becomes a whole-apartment problem.
What we do instead
We use gel bait placed in precise spots inside the cracks and cavities where the insects actually live. They feed on it and carry it back, so it reaches the parts of the population you never see, including nymphs that have not emerged yet. Where structure allows, we add crack-and-crevice treatment to the entry points and plumbing penetrations.
Then we deal with what sustains the population — a leaking trap under a sink, a gap around a waste pipe, a chute door that no longer seals. Without that step, any treatment is temporary.
What it costs and how long
From AED 150 for an apartment, excluding VAT. A light infestation is normally one visit; an established one is two visits about two weeks apart, because the second deals with insects that hatched after the first. You do not need to empty cupboards, and you can stay in the property.
If it is the building, not your flat
In towers and older apartment blocks, activity often travels through shared risers and refuse rooms. If we find that, we will tell you plainly — treating your unit alone will buy weeks, not a fix, and the real answer is a coordinated treatment arranged through building management.
How to tell you have cockroaches
People usually call after seeing one. By then there are almost always more, because a cockroach out in the open in a lit room is a sign the harbourage is crowded. These are the things worth checking before you decide how bad it is.
- Droppings. German cockroach droppings look like coarse ground black pepper, and they collect in corners of drawers, along the top edge of skirting, and inside the cabinet under the sink. American cockroaches leave larger droppings with blunt ends, closer to mouse droppings in size.
- Smear marks. Irregular dark smears on horizontal surfaces where there is moisture, usually inside the cabinet beneath the sink or behind the washing machine.
- Egg cases. A small brown capsule about the size of a rice grain, often stuck in a crack or discarded near the harbourage. One German cockroach egg case holds roughly thirty to forty eggs, which is why a problem goes from occasional to constant in a matter of weeks.
- Shed skins. Pale, empty casings in the same places as the droppings. Nymphs moult several times before they are adult, so shed skins mean the population is breeding in your property rather than wandering in.
- Smell. An established infestation has a distinct musty, slightly oily odour. If you can smell it in a closed cupboard, the population is well past a few insects.
- Daytime activity. Cockroaches are nocturnal. Seeing them move in daylight means the sheltered space is full.
German, American, and the ones people confuse them with
Which species you have changes the treatment completely, so the first thing a technician does is identify it. Four turn up in the UAE.
German cockroach — small, about 12 to 15mm, tan, with two dark stripes behind the head. This is the one in kitchens and bathrooms, and it accounts for the large majority of our residential call-outs. It lives entirely indoors, breeds faster than any of the others, and stays inside cavities. It does not fly in any useful sense. If you are seeing small light-brown cockroaches, this is almost certainly it, and gel baiting inside the harbourage is the treatment.
American cockroach — large, 35 to 50mm, reddish-brown, and the one people describe as “the big ones at night”. It does not usually breed indoors in an apartment. It lives in drains, manholes, service ducts, garden waste and irrigation boxes, and comes inside through a dry floor trap, a gap around a waste pipe, or an open door. It can glide short distances, which is why people insist they fly. Treating your kitchen for this species is beside the point — the work is drains, external harbourage and sealing the route in.
Oriental cockroach — dark brown to almost black, sluggish, and tied to damp: basements, plant rooms, drainage. Handled like the American one, from outside in.
Brown-banded cockroach — smaller than the German and without the stripes, and unlike the others it prefers warm, dry, high places: the back of a television, inside a router, the top of a wardrobe, behind a wall clock. It gets missed because nobody looks up.
The practical version: small ones in the kitchen means an indoor breeding population and baiting. Big ones at night means something is coming in from the drainage or outside, and the fix is proofing. If you are unsure what you are looking at, the pest library has photographs, or send one over WhatsApp and we will tell you.
The treatment, stage by stage
There are five stages, and skipping any of them is why treatments fail.
- Inspection. Free, and it is the part that decides everything else. The technician identifies the species, finds the harbourage, and looks for what is feeding and watering it. In a kitchen this means pulling the cooker forward, checking the fridge motor housing, and looking under the sink — not walking around with a sprayer.
- Baiting. Gel bait is placed in small quantities directly into cracks, cavities and voids. It is deliberately slow-acting: a fast kill would stop the insects returning to the harbourage, and returning is the whole point. Foraging adults carry the active ingredient back, and nymphs that never leave the cavity are affected in turn.
- Dealing with the source. A dripping trap, a gap around a waste pipe, a chute door that no longer seals, cardboard stored under the sink. German cockroaches need water more urgently than food, so a slow leak matters more than crumbs.
- The follow-up. On an established infestation, a second visit about two weeks later. Egg cases are not affected by bait, so the follow-up deals with whatever hatched after the first visit. This is the visit people skip and then blame the treatment.
- Verification. Monitors left in the harbourage so the result is something you can see rather than something you hope for.
Expect activity to increase for the first two or three days. Insects leave the cavity to reach the bait, so you see more of them before you see fewer. It is the treatment working, not failing, and it is the point at which most people reach for a supermarket spray and undo it.
Keeping them out afterwards
Once a property is clear, the things that keep it clear are unglamorous and they mostly involve water and gaps.
- Fix slow leaks under sinks and behind appliances, and dry the sink area at night. A property with no standing water is a property German cockroaches struggle to hold.
- Pour a little water down any floor drain you never use, once a week. A dry floor trap is an open pipe, and it is the single most common route for American cockroaches into a UAE bathroom.
- Seal the gaps where pipes pass through walls and cabinet backs — silicone or expanding foam, not tape.
- Get cardboard out of the kitchen. Boxes and paper bags stored under the sink are harbourage and are frequently how the insects arrived in the first place, from a supermarket or a delivery.
- Empty the bin nightly and keep the chute door sealing properly. In a shared building, a chute that does not close is everybody’s problem.
- Check what comes in. Secondhand appliances, especially microwaves and fridges, are a common route, and so are grocery deliveries in the summer.
In a villa or a ground-floor apartment with a garden, the outside matters as much as the inside — see residential pest control for how we handle the perimeter. Where a property has had repeat problems, or where a restaurant cannot afford a recurrence, an annual contract with scheduled visits and monitoring costs less over a year than two emergency treatments. Prices for both are on the pricing page.