Mosquitoes aren't strongly attracted to light itself the way moths are. But outdoor lights draw other insects that create activity around the light, and the heat and CO2 from nearby people are what pull mosquitoes to lit gathering areas.
If mosquitoes seem to swarm around your patio lights or porch fixture every evening, you might be tempted to blame the lights. And you’re right, but not necessarily for the reasons that you might expect. The relationship between mosquitoes and light is more indirect than it appears.
Most mosquito species are not particularly attracted to visible light. They navigate primarily by CO2, body odor, and heat. What outdoor lights do attract are the insects mosquitoes coexist with, like moths, gnats, and other flying insects. From your point of view, this looks like a huge swarm of bugs around your favorite string lights every night around 8 PM.
The more direct factor that pulls mosquitoes to the lights is that the lights are where people gather. Where people gather, they also exhale. The CO2 exhaled pulls mosquitoes in because it’s one of the signals they use to figure out where hosts are.
That said, certain light types do make the problem worse. Certain wavelengths of light attract more flying insects. The worst culprits here tend to be older incandescent bulbs and standard white LEDs. If you have these up in your outdoor areas, you’ll likely see more insects clouding around them. You won’t see this quite as much with warm-toned yellow or amber LED bulbs.
If you’re looking for an effective way to reduce the mosquito population on your property, Mosquito Squad of Princeton can help. With barrier treatments applied directly to the daytime resting areas across your yard, mosquitoes can be controlled on a population level. By the time evening arrives and the patio lights go on, the number of hungry mosquitoes you see could be reduced by as much as 90%.
