How to Tell Carpet Moths From Clothes Moths in Caversham

Behaviour Comes Before Damage

Most identification advice starts with the damaged item, which is sound but arrives late. A staircase and landing is where people see moths first, because it is open, it is lit, and everybody passes through it several times a day.

What Both Species Do

• Avoid light. Neither is drawn to a lamp. A moth circling a bulb is almost certainly something else
• Stay low. They run and flutter near floor level rather than flying about a room
• Run rather than fly when disturbed — a scuttle across a carpet with a short flutter at the end is characteristic
• Move short distances. Both are poor fliers. A moth in a room did not come far
• Sit still on a vertical surface — a wall, a riser, the side of a wardrobe — often in a shaded corner

What Separates Them

Carpet moth

• Seen at floor level, on stair treads and risers, along skirting, on hallway and landing carpet
• Often seen while you are walking through, disturbed by the movement
• Seen in the open parts of a house rather than in enclosed storage
• Appears near where the flooring is oldest or least disturbed

Clothes moth

• Seen when you open something — a wardrobe door, a drawer, a suitcase, a box
• Comes out in a small burst rather than being found already moving
• Concentrated in bedrooms and storage rather than distributed through the house
• Often several at once from the same enclosed space

The Height Test on a Staircase

Worth doing in a multi-storey house, because it points at the source as well as the species.

1. Note which floor you see them on, over a fortnight
2. Concentrated on the top landing: look upward — a loft hatch, a roof space, stored textiles
3. Concentrated at the bottom: look at the hall carpet, the understairs cupboard and the front door
4. Evenly spread up the flight: the stair carpet itself is a good candidate
5. Only when a wardrobe is opened: clothes moth, in that wardrobe

Ruling Out the Ones That Are Neither

• Pantry moth — near kitchen cupboards, flour, rice, cereal and dried pet food, and it will fly to a light. Nothing to do with carpets
• Larger moths at a window at night — outdoor species, drawn in by lighting
• Silverfish — fast, silver, wingless, and a different animal entirely

Treatment starts from £220. Tell us which floor you see them on and whether they come out of something when you open it — those two answers do most of the identification.