How to apply insect repellent properly (and why almost nobody does)

Americans have the theory down. More than eight in ten know that the best defense against mosquito-borne illness is avoiding bites and keeping mosquitoes down around the house. That number has been stable for three years running.

The practice is a different story. In the Annenberg Public Policy Center's 2026 survey, fielded among 1,904 US adults in August and published on 10 September, just 15% knew that insect repellent should not go on skin underneath clothing. Four in ten said they had no idea. Only 31% knew the order in which to apply sunscreen and repellent, and nearly half were unsure.

So the country understands mosquitoes reasonably well. It does not understand the bottle in its hand.

The same result, three years in a row

The useful thing about this survey is that Annenberg has now run it three times, which turns a snapshot into a trend line. The trend is flat.

Knowledge of the under-clothing rule: 14% in 2025, 15% in 2026. Knowledge of the sunscreen order: 33%, then 31%. Both changes sit inside the margin of error, which is another way of saying nothing happened.

Meanwhile the share of people who say they routinely take precautions has crept up to 64%, from 59% in 2024. Among that group, 81% remove standing water and 71% avoid places where mosquitoes are, but only 64% actually wear repellent, down from 72% in 2024. Window screen maintenance has fallen too, from 64% to 54%.

People are doing more of the easy, one-off jobs and less of the fiddly repeat ones. That is a very human pattern and it has nothing to do with mosquitoes.

Rule one: repellent goes on exposed skin, not under your clothes

The CDC's guidance is blunt about this. Do not apply repellent to skin under clothing. Repellent belongs on skin the mosquito can actually reach, and on top of clothing if you want to treat the fabric.

Putting it underneath achieves nothing useful. The mosquito is not going through your shirt to find the treated patch, and you have put a product on skin that was already covered. It is the sort of instruction that sounds obvious once you hear it, which makes the 15% figure more striking, not less.

The practical version: treat ankles, wrists, the back of the neck, and anywhere a sleeve rides up when you move. Those gaps are where bites actually happen.

Rule two: sunscreen first, let it dry, then repellent

The CDC recommends applying sunscreen first and insect repellent second. Only about a third of people know this, and the reasoning is worth understanding because it explains a lot.

Sunscreen needs to be applied generously and reapplied often. Repellent is applied more sparingly and to a narrower area. Layering the frequently reapplied product underneath, and the sparingly used one on top, is the arrangement that makes the least mess of both. It is also the practical argument against all-in-one sunscreen-repellent products, which force you to reapply a repellent on the sunscreen's schedule.

The correct order still costs you sun protection

Here is the part that rarely makes it into the advice.

A 1997 Lancet study by Montemarano and colleagues found that applying a DEET-based repellent on top of sunscreen reduced the sunscreen's SPF by roughly a third. A follow-up clinical trial in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology in 2000 tested the reverse question and found the opposite result: the sunscreens tested did not reduce the repellent's performance. More recently, a 2025 study in Parasites and Vectors using an ex vivo human skin model reported impaired UV protection when the two were applied together.

So the CDC's order is the right trade-off, but it is a trade-off. If you are using both, a higher SPF than you would otherwise choose is a sensible hedge.

Two caveats. This body of research is small, and it was done on DEET formulations. Nobody has run the equivalent trials on botanical repellents, so it would be wrong to assume the same interaction applies, in either direction. Treat it as what it is: a finding about one widely used active ingredient, not a law of nature.

Strength is not the same as coverage

Three in ten respondents thought the CDC recommends a repellent containing more than 50% DEET. It does not. DEET is an effective, EPA-registered active with a long record behind it, and CDC guidance notes that concentrations above 50% generally do not add further protection against bites. Higher concentration buys duration, up to a point, and then stops buying anything.

Worth noting for anyone who assumes the agency's list is all synthetics: the CDC's recommended actives include oil of lemon eucalyptus, para-menthane-diol, and 2-undecanone, all of which are plant-derived or plant-identical.

What the survey really exposes is that people think about repellent as a strength question when it is mostly a technique question.

The gap between a product that works and a product that works on you is usually application, not chemistry.

The label is the instruction manual, and nobody reads it

Every finding in this survey points the same way. The information people need is printed on the bottle, and they are not reading it.

That is partly on manufacturers. A label that buries its directions under marketing copy is a label designed to be skimmed. At Wild Bunch Naturals we would rather be boring about this: our coconut oil based spray tells you to reapply every two hours, and that instruction is there because it is what the product is designed for, not because it sounded good in a meeting. Read it. Then read the one on whatever else is in your cupboard.

Plant-powered or otherwise, a repellent is a tool with a technique attached. Learning the technique takes about ninety seconds and outperforms buying a stronger bottle.

Love the outdoors, deter the bugs, and put the stuff on properly.