How To Make DIY Homemade Gnat Traps

There are plenty of materials lying around in your home to make a homemade gnat trap. Some such materials are apple cider vinegar, dish detergent, sugar, water, paper or plastic wrap, cups,  bowls or mason jars, rubber bands, and finally tape.

There are three important components to a successful homemade gnat trap. First is the attractant with which the gnats are allured, second is the container for the attractant, and lastly, the stopper which allows movement in one direction not dissimilar to a corral fish trap.

Now the next step in answering your question on how to catch gnats is to select a suitable container. Ideally, the container should be small and unobtrusive but also big enough to contain enough mixture, so the gnats won’t climb on each other to fly out successfully.

Use a mason jar or if you don’t have a spare mason jar in your home, you can substitute with a small bowl or a plastic cup which also works superbly. Alternatively, why not use them all to make multiple traps and maximize your chances of trapping the gnats?

Now that you have decided upon a vessel for your gnat trap, it’s time to get pouring. Fill the vessel approximately one-half inch from the bottom with apple cider vinegar. This ensures that there is sufficient liquid to drown the gnats without wasting too much of it.

Why apple cider vinegar? The strong smell of the vinegars is irresistible to gnats as they are heavily attracted to overripe and fermented fruits which is their actual food source and is closely mimicked by the cider vinegar making it the perfect lure.

Sugar is one of the densest sources of energy in nature which makes it appealing to all insects and gnats are no exception. Most insects have an acute sense of smell that is hyper-tuned for food sources with some of them being able to detect sugar from a few miles away.

Since no one would want to have a container filled with a bunch of dead insects lying around, I’m sure you would like for this entire ordeal to be over with as soon as possible, thus with the addition of sugar with any luck all the gnats in your vicinity should be attracted and hence neutralized in a few days.

After adding sugar, add water to the mix. This will increase the volume of liquid to hold a greater number of helpless gnats meaning you need to refill the trap less often, it also diffuses the vinegar and sugar compounds in the container closer to the mixture surface.

This is important because both vinegar and sugar are denser than water and end up settling at the bottom due to sedimentation. Furthermore, concentrated vinegar has a lower boiling point so diluting them makes them last longer as well.

Lastly, add a few drops of dish soap to our attractant mixture and this entire concoction will be complete. While the previous additions either had something to do with attracting or longevity, the purpose of dish soap is neither.

Water has the strongest surface tension among the naturally occurring liquids due to its strong hydrogen bond, this means many insects including gnats can simply land and walk on water. Dish soap serves to weaken the hydrogen bonds and ensure the gnats sink the moment they land.

Now with all ingredients in place, stir the mixture in our DIY gnat trap container gently to mix everything uniformly. Ensure that the sugar is completely dissolved, and the dish soap thoroughly mixed instead of sinking to the bottom.

Improperly mixed ingredients mean our attractant won’t be as effective as they could have been. Even at half effectiveness, they could kill gnats, but it would also last much longer. We would rather not have you waste your time and materials if we can help it.

Making a trap opening is crucial for improving the effectiveness of the trap. Some gnats may be attracted by the smell of the vinegar solution but could decide not to fly in, making the trap less effective than it could be.

By having a trap opening, you can ensure that your trap has a 100% success rate against attracted gnats. You have two choices for making the trap openings depending on the materials available to you.

Plastic Wrap

Using a plastic wrap, cover the top of the container and stretch it tightly over the opening. Once properly stretched over the opening of the container, poke several small ½ inch holes in it.

This ensures that when a gnat flies in, it won’t be able to fly out easily should it decide not to take a dip until it finally tires itself out and falls down into the deep. Any evaporated vinegar could also condense near the underside of the plastic making the trap more effective and longer lasting.

Paper Funnel

If you don’t have access to plastic wrap or want to go green, a paper funnel works just as well. Grab a sheet of paper and make a cone from it with a small hole at one end. The design is very reminiscent of traditional fish traps.

Once the gnats are funneled into the narrow hole, they won’t be able to fly out easily due to the entrance being an inch or less above the solution. Even if they managed to avoid getting wet, they wouldn’t be able to fly back out the same way due to the narrow entrance.

You don’t want all your hard work to be invalidated by a gust of wind or a bunch of flies and gnats bumping constantly which could shift the material and create a new opening that the gnats could easily escape from.

If you use a plastic wrap, then it can be secured easily by simply using a rubber band and securing it tightly around the neck of the container. For paper funnels, consider using pieces of scotch tape or liquid paper glue to secure the funnel.

Now that your traps are ready and you can catch gnats, it’s also important to place them in your house strategically. Don’t place them outdoors because the wind could weaken the scent of vinegar, plus you’re trying to get rid of gnats in your home, not all the gnats in the neighborhood.

Place them indoors where gnats are most likely to pose the biggest problems such as next to fruit bowls, houseplants, and garbage cans. If you have drain gnats, consider placing one next to your sink drains as well.

Creating and placing the traps was half the battle. It’s important to constantly monitor the traps and ensure their effectiveness as well. Here are some things that you can do to ensure that your traps won’t run out of juice before the gnats do.

Check the traps daily to see how effective they are. Remember, the traps are their strongest at the start since the solution is undiluted and gifting off the strongest smell, so if a newly created trap isn’t getting any buzz, it could either be due to overlap with other traps or low gnat activity area.

If this happens to be the case, then consider relocating the trap to a different location to see if they score more gnats to make the best of all the traps present in your home. Monitoring the traps also warns you when the trap is becoming full, or the mixture is running low and needs replacing.

In order to keep your traps working at maximum effectiveness, it’s important to have the attractant mixture replenished from time to time even if it’s not attracting gnats. Ideally, you should replenish a gnat-less mixture every few days but it’s also okay to leave it for a week if you are running low.

If the trap is full of gnats, then the mixture should be replenished sooner to maintain its effectiveness. You can tell that the trap has stopped working if the vinegar aroma becomes weak or the liquid appears to have gone cloudy.

Once the traps have captured a good number of gnats, they need to be disposed of properly to prevent any problems. You can either flush them down the drain or throw them away in the garbage, just make sure the garbage bags are sealed properly.

This way, you can prevent gnat-related diseases and quell any chance of attracting more pests and insects that are attracted to gnat carrion, both of which could put both you and your neighbors at risk.

Gnats reproduce in no time. Taking only 28 days to complete their whole lifecycle, a single mated female gnat can lay up to 200 eggs that hatch in 4 to 6 days. Thus, it isn’t really over until your traps are gnat-free for a month.

There might be a lull in between the months but gnats can easily make a second resurgence as the larvae hatched from the first generation that you were too late to trap transition into adulthood. Keep your traps working throughout this time to catch any new unsuspecting gnats to fully rid your home of gnats.

Even if you have learned how to catch gnats using vinegar, you could be waiting for months to be successfully rid of gnats and we don't plan on making you wait that long. Here are some additional tips that you can apply to remove gnats from your home faster:

In some severe cases, having a singular or a few traps might not be sufficient, and you might have to resort to making multiple types of traps to boost and bolster your gnat exterminating efforts to a greater degree.

This is especially useful for larger spaces where the gnats are likely to be all over the house instead of being consolidated near a particular common area. Spread the traps throughout high-traffic gnat areas, to make the traps last longer and increase the chances of catching a greater number of gnats to eliminate infestation much faster.

While your traps do their work of catching gnats, other factors especially other attractants could be attracting the gnats to your house from the outside. Some such common attractants include overripe fruit, dirty drains, and stagnant water.

These attractants are constantly increasing the remainder of the total gnat population that needs to be eliminated despite your traps being hard at work. Remove these attractants to give the gnats' population a proper finite cap so you can have a proper fighting chance and a feasible end goal to look towards.

Prevent gnats from coming back by taking proactive steps to eliminate their potential breeding grounds and favorable habitats. Keep areas that could nurture the larvae of gnats clean, such as drains and garbage sites.

Don’t leave food and open water lying around and make use of natural pest repellants, such as citrus, herbs, and essential oils to prevent gnats from wanting to enter your homes. Practice these gnat control measures regularly to prevent any more insect-related headaches.

The most basic way to avoid attracting more gnats into your house is obviously keeping your house clean and tidy. Clean the house regularly on a schedule to prevent any access to food for the gnats.

Give the kitchen especially a good clean, as even food crumbs or dried-up spills of any food juices serve as a significant source of food for the gnats. Furthermore, eliminate dampness around sinks, drains, rooms, and the garden soil to prevent the gnats from good egg-laying spots.