What Attracts Clothes Moths to Your House?

Clothes moths are among a small group of organisms able to digest keratin — the protein in wool, fur, silk, and feathers — but that dietary specialization doesn't mean the moth searches for a house that has it. NC State Extension describes the actual pathway directly: eggs or larvae "hitchhike into a home on articles containing wool or other animal fibers, particularly secondhand clothing, upholstered furniture, and woolen scraps." The moth (or its eggs) is already on the item before it crosses the threshold.

That matters because clothes moths are weak, light-avoiding fliers — University of Kentucky Entomology notes the larvae prefer dark, undisturbed areas like closets and storage boxes, and adults don't even feed. An organism with almost no capacity or motivation to travel toward a structure on its own is not a good candidate for "attraction" in the ants-and-food sense; it's cargo.

Once eggs or larvae are inside on a carried item, whether they persist depends on finding more keratin-rich material sitting undisturbed — a stored sweater, an unused rug, pet hair accumulated in a quiet corner. That's a real and useful distinction: a wool coat worn and cleaned regularly is rarely infested, while one boxed up in a dark closet for years is a much likelier host, not because the house attracted moths to that closet, but because an already-arrived population went undisturbed there long enough to grow. The house's role is passive throughout — it's the carried item, not the structure, doing the work of arrival.