Carpet Beetle vs. Bed Bug: How to Tell the Difference Between These Common Pests

When you spy a little brown bug scuttling across the floor, you may start to worry about an infestation. While many critters are unwelcome pests in the house, there’s no need to panic. First, you’ll want to determine what kind of insect you’re dealing with to figure out the best course of action. When it comes to telling the difference between a carpet beetle versus a bed bug, there are many key signs to look out for before calling in an exterminator.

What Is a Carpet Beetle?

Carpet beetles are small insects that feed on fibrous materials, like carpets or clothing. These insects are tiny but mighty. Carpet beetles cause a lot of damage to furniture, carpeting or rugs, clothing, and other fabrics around the house. These insects can fly into your home or be in items you bring home, like a secondhand piece of furniture you scored for free on the curb. 

If these pests are in your home, you may see the beetles themselves or notice bare spots on carpets or rugs.

What Is a Bed Bug?

Bed bugs are nocturnal, parasitic insects that feed on human or animal blood. They need blood to reproduce, so they tend to make themselves home near humans. Because they are nocturnal and tend to hide out in the daytime, bed bugs get their name from living in mattresses, providing easy access to sleeping hosts for feeding.

While bed bugs can’t fly, they can climb into bags or luggage and come home with you after you’ve traveled. Like carpet beetles, these pests can also come inside from furniture or other items you find or buy and bring home. It’s also notoriously hard to get rid of bed bugs—but not impossible.

Carpet Beetle vs. Bed Bug

Carpet beetles and bed bugs are both pests with slightly similar appearances, especially if you spot one from afar. But when you take a closer look, you’ll notice many differences from the coloring and patterns (or lack of) on each bug to how they behave and even reproduce. Here are some ways to tell the difference between carpet beetles and bed bugs:

Appearance

While both carpet beetles and bed bugs are small, flat, and oval-shaped, they do have some key differences to help you tell them apart. For one, bed bugs are almost translucent in color, especially in the nymph stage. They also have a more pronounced oval shape.

Bed bugs are brown or reddish brown, and may also appear swollen if they’ve fed recently. While carpet beetles also have some brown coloring, they also have white, black, or even yellow markings and look striped or spotted. Visually, this is a pretty clear difference to help you tell apart a carpet beetle vs. a bed bug.

Size

When it comes to deciphering between a carpet beetle vs. a bed bug, you may be able to tell just from the size. Carpet beetles are smaller, about 1/8-inch long. The bed bug is around 1/4-inch, or about the length of an apple seed.

Behavior

If the patterned thorax of a carpet beetle isn’t a dead giveaway, the behaviors of these two insects will certainly clue you in to who’s who. Although bed bugs have wing pads, they don’t have wings and cannot fly or jump. If the suspected pest in your home is flying around, though, it could be a carpet beetle, since these insects can fly.

Carpet beetles will come out in the daytime, but you’re not as likely to spot bed bugs during this time. Instead, bed bugs are nocturnal, preferring to hide away when it is light outside.

Diet 

Another major difference between carpet beetles vs. bed bugs is their diets. Carpet beetles feed on plants and materials like wool, which is how they earned their name. Carpet beetles’ diets may consist of furniture or clothing, making them an annoying pest to find in your home.

Bed bugs feed on blood, so you’ll only find them in areas where they can find human or animal hosts. Their mouths are shaped differently and sharper than carpet beetles, since they need to be able to pierce skin to feed.

Reproduction 

These two common pests even have major differences in their reproductive stages. For carpet beetles, the insect goes from egg to larva to pupa to adult, while bed bugs only go from egg to nymph to adult. Carpet beetle larva are typically larger than the adult form, while bed bugs in the nymph stage are smaller, lighter in color, and more translucent than adult bed bugs.

Health Impacts

Bed bugs bite humans to feed, and during this process, they inject an anticoagulant that can cause the bite to bleed for a little while after feeding. That’s why you may find blood spots on pillows or sheets as a sign of bed bugs. The bites are often clustered in zigzagging lines on the skin.

Although bed bug bites are itchy and uncomfortable, bed bugs aren’t known to cause serious health complications for humans unless the bite is scratched and becomes infected or if the person is allergic to bed bugs.

Carpet beetles don’t bite humans at all, but they can still cause an uncomfortable rash on the skin if they walk across it. These insects have tiny hairs that can irritate the skin.

Cost to Exterminate

Hiring an exterminator near you is the best way to deal with any kind of pest, including carpet beetles and bed bugs. Bed bugs are difficult to get rid of through home remedies, so prepare to budget about $1,000 to $2,500 for bed bug extermination costs. Most pest control services cost $200 to $600 per visit, depending on the severity, or you may spend $1,500 to $5,500 on the cost to fumigate for carpet beetles.