How to Get Rid of Carpet Moths

Why Most Attempts Fail

The usual sequence goes like this: you see a moth, buy a spray or a trap, see fewer moths for a while, then find a fresh bare patch the following spring. It looks as though the problem returned. Usually it never left.

There are two reasons. Anything aimed at the adults misses the larvae, which are hidden in the base of the pile and doing all the eating. And dealing with one room while the population carries on elsewhere — a wardrobe, a rug in the spare room, a box of jumpers in the loft — leaves a reservoir that simply recolonises the room you worked on.

A treatment that misses one feeding site is a treatment with a restart date.

Step One: Find Every Feeding Site

Before anything is treated, work out the full extent. Go room by room and look where nobody walks: under beds and sofas, behind doors, along the skirting, under rugs and on the floors of wardrobes.

Then go through what is stored. Wool coats, blankets, cushions, a rolled rug, a bag of knitting yarn, a fur or feather item handed down from a relative — all of it is food, and stored things are left alone for months, which is exactly what larvae need.

Our carpet moth identification guide shows what larvae, cases and webbing look like. Write a list as you go. That list is the job.

Step Two: Deal With Everything You Can Move

Anything portable can be dealt with away from the carpet, and this part is genuinely a job you can do yourself.

• Wash it hot. Anything that will take a 60-degree wash can go straight in. Heat kills eggs and larvae.
• Freeze what cannot be washed hot. Seal it in a bag with the air pressed out, leave it in the freezer for about a fortnight, then let it return to room temperature slowly, still in the bag.
• Dry-clean tailored wool and anything whose care label rules out the other two.
• Throw away what is past saving — but bag it first, so you are not scattering eggs on the way to the bin.

Keep cleaned items sealed and somewhere clean, not back in the wardrobe they came out of, until the room itself has been dealt with.

Step Three: The Carpet Itself

Fitted carpet cannot go in the washing machine, and this is where DIY runs out of reach. The larvae sit at the base of the pile, in the gap beside the gripper rod and sometimes in the cracks between the floorboards beneath. A household moth spray mostly lands on the surface and on whatever happens to be sitting there.

A slow, thorough vacuum of the edges and the areas under furniture does reduce numbers and is worth doing — our Huntingdon carpet moth page explains how to do it so it counts. On an established infestation, though, it lowers the population without ending it.

A professional treatment puts a residual insecticide into the affected edges, under furniture and into the places larvae shelter — where they actually are rather than where the moths are seen.

What the Shop-Bought Options Really Do

• Pheromone traps catch male moths. They are good for monitoring and for showing whether numbers are falling, but females still lay eggs and the larvae are untouched.
• Moth sprays kill what they hit. Useful inside an emptied wardrobe; limited on fitted carpet.
• Cedar, lavender and mothballs are deterrents at best, and weak ones in an open room. None of them affects larvae that are already feeding.
• Steam cleaning can kill what the heat reaches, but it soaks the carpet, and it must not be used on a treated carpet until we say the treatment has done its work.

When It Is Time to Call Us

If you have damage in more than one place, if it has reappeared after you have tried, or if the infestation is in fitted carpet you cannot lift, a treatment is the sensible next step. Our carpet moth and carpet beetle service describes what we do, and the carpet moth treatment cost guide explains the price: £220 for the first room, plus £60 for each additional room.

Every treatment is guaranteed: if the problem comes back within 14 days of treatment, we return and re-treat free of charge. For how to stop a new infestation starting later, see can you permanently get rid of carpet moths.