What Causes Carpet Beetles at Home?

At only 4mm long, carpet beetles might look unassuming. But make no mistake, an infestation in your home can result in irreparable damage to carpets, clothing, and other household materials.

What Do Carpet Beetles Look Like?

Adult carpet beetles are around 4mm long and are black to dark brown in colour. They have hard shell-like bodies, six legs, two antennae, and wings. It’s not actually the carpet beetles themselves that will do the damage in your home, however. It’s their larvae, which look like little worms with hairs.

How Do They Get In?

Carpet beetles hitch a ride into your home on infested items or they get in through cracks and gaps around doors and windows.

What Attracts Carpet Beetles?

Carpet beetle larvae love to feast on woollen carpets, clothing (and anything else) made from natural fabrics, and dried foods like pet food and flour. The thing that attracts them to natural fabrics like wool, fur, feathers, and leather is keratin, a protein that many insects love to feast on.

Why Do You Need to Get Rid of Them?

Carpet beetles can cause considerable damage to clothing and other fabrics in your home. They also breed fast so it’s easy for a small infestation to become a big one within weeks. A female carpet beetle lays between 25 and 100 eggs at a time, which take just two weeks to mature.

What are the Signs you Have Carpet Beetles in Your Home?

Damage to carpets and fabrics

The most obvious sign of infestation is holes in clothing and other fabrics. You might see threadbare areas on carpets. Damage done by carpet beetles is often mistaken for a moth infestation. The main difference is that you’ll usually see signs of moth damage over a much larger area.

Shed skins

As carpet beetles mature, they shed their skins. You might see these cases near the edges of carpets and in the creases of fabrics.

You’ll see droppings

Faecal pellets are black or brown in colour and are small and dry.

You see adult beetles

As well as seeing them on the actual items they’ve infested, it is common to see adult beetles on windowsills because they’re attracted to light.

How to Prevent and Get Rid of Carpet Beetles

Prevention Strategies include;

Keep your home clean of hair, dust, and debris that carpet beetles love to feed on.

Store foodstuffs in airtight containers to stop beetles from getting access.

Consider protecting vulnerable fabrics with plastic covers.

Install window screens to stop bugs from getting in.

Inspect any items you bring into your home carefully.

To get rid of carpet beetles;

Try and find where the infestation is coming from. Start by focusing on the areas where they’ve caused damage.

Vacuum the infested area thoroughly, then vacuum your entire home.

Wash fabrics on the hottest possible setting and shampoo or steam your carpets to kill larvae and eggs.

Get rid of any infested food.

Why You Need Contego

Carpet beetles breed fast and they can cause irreparable damage to your home and precious items. That’s why when it comes to dealing with an infestation, your best bet is to call in professional pest control. Protect your home and your precious possessions by calling Contego for a fast, effective, expert pest control solution.

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