How to Get Rid of Carpet Beetles Naturally (7 Helpful Tips)

Carpet beetles are a huge nuisance and they can cause permanent damage to not only carpets, but also clothing, sheets and furniture. Getting rid of them is hard, but not impossible. While these products can be quite effective, you don’t have to turn to toxic foggers and other dangerous pesticides to remove them. There are plenty of safe, natural methods of pest removal that are highly effective on carpet beetles. 

How To Get Rid of Carpet Beetles Naturally

If you have a carpet beetle problem, this article may shed some light on how you got them. For now, here are 7 different ways to get rid of carpet beetles naturally.

1. Deep Clean

Deep cleaning your home is usually the first thing experts recommend when you suspect a carpet beetle infestation. This means vacuuming the whole house, washing all the sheets and every item of clothing, including dry cleaning for those things that need it.

It also means dusting everywhere, scrubbing and wiping down all the flat surfaces, etc.

You may want to consider hiring professionals for this. It’s a big job and it can be very time-consuming, What’s more, if you’re doing it on your own you may not be thorough enough. A professional house cleaner who’s asked to deep clean the whole home will do a much better job.

There’s an excellent chance that a good deep clean will get rid of a carpet beetle infestation, and it will also go a long way towards preventing them if performed on a regular basis.

2. Boric Acid

Boric acid is an insecticide, but it’s a natural one that’s safe around children and pets. That’s because we and our pets would have to consume a large amount of boric acid in order for it to be toxic to us. It’s also odorless and won’t stain your carpet the way many other insecticides do.

It’s a very popular way to get rid of roaches and ants, and it works remarkably well. It kills in two different ways- when insects consume it, boric acid disrupts their metabolism and kills them. When they walk across boric acid powder, it’s a powerful abrasive that cuts through their exoskeleton.

For ants and cockroaches, it’s especially effective because when it coats their exoskeleton, they don’t die right away. Instead, they usually have time to return to their nest before they die.

When other insect eat them, they then ingest the boric acid, killing them, too. Since carpet beetles eat dead insects, including other carpet beetles, this is an especially effective method of killing them.

3. Diatomaceous Earth

This is a powdered rock, or, more accurately, a powder made up of microscopic fossils. Diatomaceous earth is composed of fossilized diatoms, which are small, hard shelled organisms. It’s a very effective insecticide which is completely non-toxic and safe to use in the home.

It works by drying the bugs out. It has unique chemical properties that essentially dissolve the waxy lipid layer on the outside of an insects exoskeleton. This layer is what keeps the water inside them from evaporating, and without it, they essentially dry out completely, and die.

Something like this one is what you’re looking for.

4. Fly Traps

Placing a bunch of sticky fly traps on windowsills and in your closet can be an easy, low cost, and low maintenance method of controlling a carpet beetle infestation. By the windows, they’ll catch the adults as they try to make their way into your home to look for spots to lay their eggs.

In your closet, or up in the attic, they’ll catch both adults trying to lay their eggs and the larvae that have hatched and are looking for food. This method does rely on proper trap placement, and if you’re not confident you can place them properly, you might want to hedge your bets by using multiple methods of pest control.

What are carpet beetles?

5. Steam Cleaning

This is an easy, entirely safe method of getting rid of carpet beetles. Since the beetles are likely to infest carpets, sheets, and clothes, you’ll need to steam clean all of them. This might require some equipment rentals, unless you have carpet steamers and clothes steamers at home already.

While steam cleaning your clothes and sheets is pretty straightforward, and the cost of renting the steamer is low, you may want to consider hiring professionals to steam clean your carpet. That can be a big undertaking, and the cost of paying the pros to do it for you is usually not much more than the cost of renting the machine for yourself.

Plus, the professionals will do a much more thorough job of it. Just be sure to tell them that you need all of the carpet in the house cleaned so they don’t miss any of it.

The steam will quickly kill any beetle larvae, as well as adult beetles and eggs, effectively ending the infestation. If you have something like this steam cleaner from Amazon, it could be your best bet.

6. Vinegar

Vinegar is an effective carpet beetle repellent- they hate the smell of it. Dilute white or apple cider vinegar in water and then spray it on areas where carpet beetle larvae are found. That means carpets, clothing, sheets, and furniture. The smell will fade quickly- to you. To the beetles, which have a more sensitive sense of smell, it will linger much longer.

Just remember this is a repellant, not something which kills them. It will drive them away from wherever you spray, but if you aren’t thorough you’ll just drive them from one part of your home to another, without actually getting rid of them.

7. Essential Oils

Peppermint oil and clove oil will both kill carpet beetles and their larvae. Dilute them in water and spray them onto your carpet, clothes, and sheets. These oils are highly toxic to carpet beetles and many other insects, but perfectly harmless to you, your children, and your pets. Plus, they smell great!

In addition, since they’re toxic to most insects, this can help prevent other infestations, too. Fleas are especially susceptible to clove and peppermint, and by regularly applying this treatment to your carpet, clothing, and sheets you can also prevent or end a flea infestation.

Here’s a very popular peppermint oil on Amazon that’s also inexpensive.