The signs of a moth problem are irregular holes in wool, cashmere, silk, fur and feather but not in cotton or synthetics, bare or thinning patches in a wool carpet where nobody walks, fine silky webbing or small silken cases in the dark corners of a wardrobe, cream coloured larvae up to about 10mm long, gritty debris like fine sand where the damage is, and small pale golden buff adults around 6 to 7mm that scuttle across a surface and flutter weakly rather than flying at a light.
The most useful thing to understand is that the adults do no damage at all. Clothes moth adults do not eat fabric, and in some species barely feed at all. Every hole is made by the larvae, which is why swatting the moths and hanging a repellent achieves so little, and why by the time you are regularly seeing adults on the landing the population has usually been established for months somewhere you have not looked. Finding the larvae, the cases and the frass is what tells you where the problem actually is, and that is what the rest of this covers.
Look for larvae, not for moths
The adult common clothes moth is about 6 to 7mm long with pale golden buff wings folded tent wise along its back, and it avoids light rather than seeking it. The larvae are small, cream coloured and grub like, growing to around 10mm, and depending on the species they either spin a silken tube along the surface they are feeding on or carry a small silken case about with them. The British Pest Control Association's guidance on clothes moths sets out the identification in more detail.
Alongside them you will usually find frass, which is the gritty, sandy debris the larvae leave behind. It is worth looking at closely, because it tends to take on the colour of whatever has been eaten, so pale grit in a dark navy jumper is a fairly conclusive answer.
What to look for in a wardrobe
Damage concentrates where garments are not disturbed and where they are slightly soiled, because perspiration, body oils and food traces make wool far more attractive than clean wool on its own. That means checking under collars and cuffs, in armpits, along fold lines, and in the seams and turn ups, rather than holding a jumper up to the light and calling it clear.
Then check the places that never get touched, which is where it usually starts. The back of the wardrobe, the bottom of a garment bag, boxed away winter coats, a blanket at the top of an airing cupboard, felt on the underside of a jewellery box, and anything stored in a spare room that gets opened twice a year. Undisturbed and dark is the whole requirement.
What to look for in a carpet
Carpet damage is more often missed than wardrobe damage, because the affected area is by definition somewhere nobody walks or looks. Check under sofas, beds and wardrobes, behind doors that always stand open, along the skirting boards, under the edges of fitted furniture, and at the gripper rod at the room's edge. Wool carpet and wool underlay are both at risk.
The early sign is not a hole. It is a patch where the pile looks thinner, shorter or slightly faded compared with the carpet a foot away, because the larvae graze the fibres down before anything opens up. By the time there is a bare patch showing the backing, the infestation has been running a long while.
Telling clothes moths from the moths at your window
Most moths people see indoors are harmless. The ones bumping around a lampshade on a summer evening are almost always garden moths that came in through an open window, since clothes moths avoid light and tend to run rather than fly. If you disturb a wardrobe and something small and buff coloured scuttles out and drops down the back, that is far more significant than anything circling a bulb.
Moths in a kitchen cupboard are a different job again, since those are usually food moths breeding in dried goods such as flour, rice, cereal, nuts or dry pet food, and the answer there is finding and binning the infested packet rather than treating textiles. Brown house moths are larger, darker and speckled, and will feed on both fabric and stored food. The BPCA's guidance on house moths covers the distinction, and getting the species right matters because it decides where the work happens.
How they get in
The usual route is something brought into the house rather than something that flew in. Second hand and inherited textiles are the big one, so rugs, vintage coats, upholstered furniture, and boxes of things that have come out of somebody's loft or a house clearance. A single infested rug will populate a whole room.
The other source is one that almost nobody checks. Old birds' nests in a roof void, and any wool based material up there, will support clothes moth larvae quite happily, and they then work downwards into the rooms below. If a property has had birds in the eaves at any point, the loft is worth looking at properly rather than assuming the problem started in the bedroom.
Where the risk runs higher around here
The properties that give us the most moth work are the period houses, oast houses and barn conversions around Tenterden, Canterbury and the Ashford villages. They tend to combine original timber, large undisturbed roof voids, wool carpets, and rooms that are used seasonally rather than daily, which is close to a complete list of what a clothes moth population needs.
The coast adds its own factor, because the damp, salt laden air along the seafront from Dymchurch through Hythe and Folkestone keeps humidity higher in unheated and infrequently used rooms, and a slightly humid, undisturbed room with a wool carpet is exactly where this takes hold. We've found that the rooms people describe as barely used are almost always where the survey finds the source, rather than the bedroom where the holes were noticed.
Why vacuuming and laundering alone rarely finish it
Cleaning removes what is on the surface and does genuinely help, but eggs and larvae sit deep in carpet pile, under gripper rods, in floorboard gaps, in the joints of a wardrobe carcass and behind skirtings, and a vacuum does not reach any of that.
In our experience, treating the whole room, including the carpet edges, under fitted furniture and the wardrobe carcass itself, works better than laundering the affected garments alone because the larvae are almost never confined to the clothes showing the holes. A wardrobe that has been emptied, washed and put back is routinely reinfested from the carpet underneath it within a few weeks, and the owner reasonably concludes the treatment failed.
Alongside a treatment, laundering at 60 degrees or freezing items for a fortnight will deal with what is in the clothes, and rigorous vacuuming of edges and under furniture removes eggs and frass. It is the combination that works. Because most of this happens in bedrooms and living rooms, people quite reasonably ask whether the treatments are safe around pets and children, and that is worth reading before booking anything.
When to call someone
Call if you are finding fresh holes rather than old ones, if you find larvae or cases, if the carpet is thinning in more than one place, or if you have cleared a wardrobe once and the damage has come back. Moth work rewards being caught early, because the population is smaller and confined to fewer places. Clearing wardrobes and moving furniture beforehand makes a real difference to the result, and the general advice on what to do before a pest control visit applies here more than for most jobs.
Moths are one of the pests we handle alongside the rest of the common pests in Kent, and we have been treating them across Romney Marsh, Ashford, Canterbury, Tenterden, Folkestone, Hythe and the surrounding villages, with more than twenty-five years in the trade behind that. If you have found holes and you are not sure what made them, get in touch and we will identify it properly.
Cinque Ports Pest Control Ltd is a family run business based in Dymchurch, Romney Marsh. We are BPCA members, Kent County Council Trading Standards approved, TrustMark registered, SafeContractor approved and CRRU supporters.
