Spiders
Where Do Spiders Live?
Content Updated: August 19, 2025
Spiders are everywhere, whether crawling through the heat of the desert, floating from a silk balloon, or hiding for months under water at the stream's edge. Their ability to adapt to different environments allows them to succeed in various habitats, including your home. But where do spiders live in and around the house? This answer depends on the type of spider.
Thus far, more than 40,000 different species of spiders have been discovered around the world. About 3,700 of those species can be found in North America. Most of these spiders will never manage to put even one of their eight legs inside your home, but for some species, you may see more than just a few setting up camp.
Where do spiders live?
A spider's choice of where to live comes down to a few key things: a steady food source, their capture style for prey, enough moisture, and a safe, sheltered spot to call their own. Spiders are often attracted to quiet, undisturbed spots like your attic, basement, or garage when they venture indoors. Outside, these adaptable arachnids truly make themselves at home in various places, whether under the eaves of a house, in the corners of a garden shed, or weaving their intricate webs in the nooks of trees. Spiders typically capture their prey in two ways: some actively hunt, while others build intricate webs to catch their meals.
House spider habitats
These common indoor dwellers are known for their messy, tangled webs found in quiet corners.
- Environment: Dark, secluded spots like corners, basements, attics, and garages
- Web location: Areas like corners, under furniture, near windows
- Capture technique: Web-builders
Brown recluse spider habitats
Often found hiding in undisturbed clutter, the brown recluse is a shy spider that rarely builds a large hunting web.
- Environment: Warm, dry, secluded areas
- Web location: Basements, attics, closets, shoes, storage boxes, woodpiles, sheds, or under rocks
- Capture technique: Hunters
Wolf spider habitats
Unlike many web-building spiders, the wolf spider is a swift hunter who stalks its prey on the ground.
- Environment: Forests, gardens, grasslands, marshes, mountains
- Web location: Burrows or natural holes and leaf litter
- Capture technique: Hunters
Tarantula spider habitats
These large, often hairy spiders are known for living in burrows and ambushing their prey rather than spinning webs.
- Environment: Rainforests to deserts, across many continents
- Web location: Ground burrows (dug or taken over); some in silk-lined tree hollows
- Capture technique: Hunters
Jumping spider habitats
With their excellent eyesight and agile movements, jumping spiders are active daytime hunters that leap onto their prey.
- Environment: Diverse: tropical forests, temperate regions, urban areas
- Web location: Grasslands, prairies, open woodlands, backyards, and gardens
- Capture technique: Hunters
Black widow spider habitats
Recognizable by their distinct markings, black widow spiders build strong, irregular webs in dark, undisturbed places.
- Environment: Dim, sheltered indoor areas, avoiding high-traffic spots
- Web location: Cardboard boxes, shoes, sheds, garages, attics, dark corners
- Capture technique: Web-builders
What should I do if I find a spider living in my home?
Many homeowners unknowingly create an inviting spider habitat within their cluttered basements and attics. Simple steps like sealing cracks and crevices around your foundation, adding screens to windows and doors, and keeping clutter to a minimum inside and out can help prevent spiders from entering your home.
And remember, spiders play a vital role in our ecosystem, acting as natural pest control by munching on unwanted insects like mosquitoes and flies. While most spiders are harmless, you might want to give extra space to certain species, like the black widow or the brown recluse. However, if you face more spiders than you're comfortable with, or these helpful creatures become unwelcome guests, Terminix spider control services are here to help!
