Their eggs – 25 on average for the furniture beetle and 50 on average for the death watch beetle – are generally laid in summer, in cracks in wood.

Death watch beetles can also develop in deciduous and conifer wood, but unlike the furniture beetle, green wood is essential to their development.

The adults of the furniture beetle (2.5 to 5 mm) and the death watch beetle (5 to 7 mm) have massive and globular bodies, and their heads are hidden under the hood-shaped thorax.