We study acoustic and electromagnetic waves in a periodic medium (or any other background medium with a spectral gap) disturbed by a single defect, i.e., a local disturbance analogous to a well potential in solid state physics. We show that defects do not change the essential spectrum of the associated nonnegative operators and can only create isolated eigenvalues of finite multiplicity in a gap of the periodic medium, with the eigenmodes decaying exponentially. We give a constructive and simple description of defects in acoustic and dielectric media, including a simple condition on the parameters of the medium and of the detect, which ensures the rise of a localized eigenmode with the corresponding eigen-value in a specified subinterval of the given gap of the periodic medium.