What Carpet Moths Actually Eat
The adult moth does no damage at all. It has no working mouthparts and its only job is to lay eggs. Everything you see — the bare patches, the thinning pile, the holes along a skirting board — is the larvae, and they feed on keratin, which means wool, silk, fur, feather and animal hair. A pure synthetic carpet is safe.
Where they feed
Larvae avoid light and disturbance, so they work in the places nobody treads. Under a wardrobe or a heavy sofa, along the very edge of the carpet against the skirting, beneath a rug that never moves, and up the closed side of a stair runner. A room looks fine until the furniture is moved.
The Barnet houses this happens in
Hampstead Garden Suburb, Totteridge and Mill Hill village are full of large houses with formal rooms, wool carpets and inherited rugs — and a formal dining room used four times a year is exactly the undisturbed environment the larvae want. Old houses also have gappy floorboards, and larvae drop into the gaps and carry on out of sight.
Signs of carpet moths
- Bare or thinning patches at the carpet edge, under furniture or beneath a rug
- Small cream larvae, or the fine silken cases they build and drag with them
- Tiny buff-coloured moths, which fly weakly and tend to run rather than fly
- Gritty debris and shed cases along a skirting board or in a carpet gripper
- Damage on the underside of a rug that looks untouched from above
Before treatment
Move what can be moved and vacuum the edges thoroughly, including under furniture and along the gripper rods, then empty the vacuum into an outside bin. Vacuuming lifts a large share of eggs and larvae and gives the treatment a clean surface to work on. Do not shampoo the carpet first — damp wool is worse, not better.
