Lice Treatment & Lice Removal Service in San Jose, California

From an Evergreen townhouse to a Willow Glen bungalow, LiceDoctors brings head lice treatment to your door anywhere in San Jose and the South Bay. A trained technician does the whole job at your kitchen table, and on most days a same-day appointment can be arranged.

Nobody gets skipped. Your technician checks each person living with you, toddlers to grandparents, and treats every head that turns up lice before leaving. The household is billed by the hour, never per person, and a 30-day guarantee stands behind the visit when you keep up the aftercare routine.

Call LiceDoctors San Jose: (408) 599-3198 or book online.

From Alviso to Almaden: the South Bay we cover

San Jose, neighborhood by neighborhood

The city alone stretches from the salt marshes at Alviso to the hills above Almaden, and technicians work all of it. That means downtown and Japantown, the Rose Garden, Naglee Park and Willow Glen, Cambrian and Almaden Valley, and Blossom Valley and Santa Teresa toward the south end. On the east side it means Alum Rock, Evergreen and Silver Creek up against the foothills. To the north it means Berryessa and North San Jose, including the newer apartment buildings along North First Street.

West Valley and over the hill

Cupertino and Campbell share a page, and Los Gatos has one of its own. Saratoga and Monte Sereno, tucked in beside them, have no page, but they are on the route all the same. Over the hill on Highway 17, Santa Cruz has a separate page for families on the coast side of the mountains, from Scotts Valley down to Capitola and Aptos.

North toward the bay

Northwest of downtown, Santa Clara has a page, and so do Sunnyvale and Mountain View; Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, just beyond them, are covered too. Up 880 or 680, Milpitas has its own page. At the county's northern edge, Palo Alto families can start from our Palo Alto page, which also serves Menlo Park and the Peninsula.

South County

Past Coyote Valley on 101, families in Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy should call with their address to check. Your technician's drive is built into the hourly rate when you are within 30 miles, but some South County and mountain addresses may sit farther out than that. Visits that far out carry a two-hour minimum; mention the town and the cross street when you call.

A South Bay home visit, start to finish

One call to the 408 number, or a few minutes with the online form, gets you on the schedule. A same-day opening is usually available, and technicians keep working from the early hours into the late evening all week, so the visit can start after the drive home on 280 or 101 instead of in the middle of it.

Watch for an unmarked car. If you live in a gated complex or a townhome community, send the gate code or call-box number, plus your building and unit, when you book; it saves a slow lap around the parking lot. In a Sunnyvale Eichler with glass walls or a ranch house in Cambrian, the kitchen table near the windows usually has the best light.

Some setup helps. Pick a bright room and a straight-backed chair, since the person being treated sits for a while. Have the whole household there from the start: each person is checked, including grandparents or relatives staying over, and the technician treats every head with lice during that visit. Washing the hair or adding product beforehand is not necessary.

Billing runs on time spent, not on a fee for each person. If grandparents live in a backyard cottage or ADU on the same lot, have them come over to the main house for their check.

The method is careful by design. Your technician explains each stage, oils the hair, sections it and runs a professional-grade comb through section after section to catch lice and eggs. When everything is dry, they hunt for the nits that remain and slide each one off its strand by hand, then close with a second coat of oil and a final pass of the comb. A missed nit can restart a case, and at a school that looks for nits before letting a child back in, as San Jose Unified does, that last pass matters even more.

Watching closely while the technician works pays off later, because you will know what a nit looks like on your own child's hair when it is your turn with the comb.

For most families the work takes two and a half to three hours. Kids with short hair go faster: one child with a short cut can be wrapped up in roughly sixty minutes.

Before leaving, your technician hands over a follow-up routine of olive oil and careful combing that handles eggs nobody could have seen yet. Because of it, you can skip the whole-house cleaning and the heap of laundry. Almost no one needs a second appointment, and the household is no longer contagious once your technician has left.

The South Bay technicians, in parents' own words

Hadeer, Melissa and Tatiana are the technicians serving San Jose and the cities around it. Patience comes up in nearly every recent Google review from local families, and one parent singles out how clearly the aftercare was explained.

Hadeer gets the most mentions. Julia (July 2026) wrote, "So patient and easy!" and David (April 2026) left a short thank-you for her as well.

Melissa earned a long review from Jaclyn (May 2026), who described her as patient and thorough with a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, on time, and careful to explain the aftercare in detail so the family knew exactly what to do next. Jaclyn added that Melissa kept both little ones comfortable the whole way through. Her verdict: "absolutely worth every penny."

Elena (July 2026) called when her kids got lice and had someone at the house the next day. The technician worked on the children and on Elena as well, and Elena described her as "very helpful and patient."

Tatiana rounds out the South Bay team. Taken together, the reviews describe two small children kept comfortable through a long comb-out, a parent treated along with the kids, and aftercare explained step by step.

School lice rules: San Jose Unified versus the state

San Jose Unified wants nits gone before return

San Jose Unified School District holds a stricter line than California's public health guidance. On its health information page, the district says that when a student is identified as having head lice or nits, a parent or guardian is contacted and the student is sent home. The School Health Office gives the family information about lice, treatment, readmission requirements and resources.

The student may return the following day if the nits and lice have been removed, and school office staff examine the student's head before they go back into the classroom. If a student has not come back free of nits and lice two days after being sent home, the absence is marked unexcused.

In practice, a child sent home on a Tuesday and treated that evening can be back on Wednesday, provided the office check finds the lice and nits gone. That is the case for booking the visit quickly rather than waiting for the weekend.

What the California Department of Public Health recommends

The state's own advice points the other way. The CDPH school guidance on head lice, last updated in December 2022, says lice or nits are no reason to keep a child out of class, and that no-nit rules have never been shown to prevent outbreaks or make them shorter. Under that guidance, parents hear about it when classes let out, and on the day after treatment the child is examined again and let back into class; if the child still has lice, the school contacts the family again. By CDPH's reading, routine screening of a whole class or school has no evidence of lowering infestation rates either, and the department advises against sending a notice to an entire classroom or school after one case.

Other districts, preschools and the return to class

San Jose is split among many school districts, including East Side Union High, Evergreen, Alum Rock, Berryessa, Oak Grove and Cambrian, and the neighboring cities run their own. Rules differ from one to the next, so call your school's health office before your child goes back. If your child attends a charter or private school, including a Catholic school in the Diocese of San Jose, ask that school directly; preschools and daycares make their own rules too. Our roundup of San Jose and South Bay school lice policies covers more districts, and our related articles include posts on Cupertino, Campbell and Santa Clara schools.

Whatever the rule, tell the school office what you found and when the treatment happened. Need paperwork for the school? First check that a LiceDoctors note will do, then ask the office by email; the note goes out within a business day. Look at brothers and sisters too, itchy or not, and give the families your child sees most a quiet heads-up.

Lice season starts early in the South Bay

Across the US, searches for lice treatment crest in July and August, and February is when they sag the most. Calls arrive in the wake of the moments children crowd together: the first weeks of school, summer camp, sleepovers and winter break.

Here, the school year opens while that summer crest is still going. San Jose Unified's 2026 to 2027 student calendar began the regular school year on August 6, so by the first week of August kids are back at shared desks and lunch tables. The district also builds in a fall recess, which ran September 28 to October 2 this year, a Thanksgiving recess from November 25 to 27, and a week off in mid-February. Each one is a good moment for a quick head check once school resumes.

Before school starts, the summer fills with day camps, sleepovers and family trips. The mild weather keeps kids outdoors much of the year, but lice do not travel through grass, air or sandboxes. They cross when heads touch: a sleepover, a group selfie, a younger sibling climbing into a parent's bed.

Winter break brings visiting relatives and full holiday tables, with plenty of the same contact. A louse lives on a warm human scalp and nowhere else for long, so no month is off-limits, and a quick weekly look through your child's hair during the school year helps you spot a case before it spreads.

Lice treatment prices in the South Bay

LiceDoctors uses California pricing here, and one rate covers everyone in the house: $210 for the opening hour, then $185 an hour from there, measured in 15-minute steps with at least one hour per appointment. No travel charge applies up to 30 miles; past that distance, the booking runs at least two hours. On Sundays add $20, and the major holidays can bring a holiday fee.

In dollars: two and a half hours of work totals $487.50, and a family of four usually spends about $490. A lone child with a pixie cut, finished in an hour, costs $210. A grandparent or nanny who wants a quick check while the technician is there adds only those minutes, and the hourly rate in Gilroy is the same as in Sunnyvale, even where the 30-mile rule changes the minimum.

HSA and FSA cards are welcome, since lice removal qualifies as an eligible medical expense.

Insurance is a maybe. LiceDoctors can put a diagnosis code on the receipt for you to send your insurer, though any reimbursement is up to the plan and never promised. For an itemized receipt, email the office. Every fee is listed on the pricing page. And because the follow-up plan almost always takes the place of a second appointment, that first bill is usually the only one.

Why South Bay parents book LiceDoctors

The company has spent more than 20 years on head lice and has over 600,000 clients behind it. Families who keep up the simple follow-up plan see a 99.6% success rate.

The protocol Hadeer, Melissa and Tatiana follow was approved by a dermatologist after her review. That is Dr. Madeleine Sowash, MD, FAAD, who holds the Lead Medical Advisor role at LiceDoctors.

Your technician's kit holds oil and combs, not pesticides, heat devices or enzyme products. Every step is all-natural and chemical-free and gentle enough for any age. That matters more now that lice resistant to the usual over-the-counter products are common nationwide.

Keep up the plan, and if lice return in the 30 days that follow, LiceDoctors re-treats your family for free under the 30-day guarantee. For Silicon Valley families who would rather not lose an afternoon to a salon and a drive across the valley, the entire visit happens at home.

Found something tonight? Skip the drugstore run and pick up the phone instead. A same-day visit is usually available, and before your technician leaves, every head in the house will have been checked and you will know exactly what to do over the following days. Until then, keep the kids from sharing pillows or leaning head to head over a tablet.

Call LiceDoctors San Jose: (408) 599-3198 or book online.