Convert feet to meters, meters to feet, or feet & inches to centimeters. Instant results with the exact formula.
| Height (ft & in) | Total Inches | Meters | Centimeters |
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| Feet (ft) | Meters (m) | Feet (ft) | Meters (m) |
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Walk into a hardware store in New York and lumber is sold in feet. Walk into a building site in Berlin and every measurement is in meters. These two systems — the imperial foot and the metric meter — coexist across the globe, and understanding how to convert between them is a daily practical skill for travelers, engineers, athletes, architects, and anyone tracking their personal height or fitness goals.
The foot (ft) is defined as exactly 0.3048 meters. This precise international definition has been in place since 1959, set by an agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Before that agreement, the US survey foot and the British foot differed by a tiny but meaningful fraction — causing real-world discrepancies in land surveys and engineering projects.
The meter (m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), used by virtually every country in official scientific, commercial, and governmental contexts. Its modern definition is based on the speed of light: one meter is the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
The conversion is simple and exact:
For the reverse — meters to feet:
Since 0.3048 is defined exactly, there is no rounding involved in the conversion itself — only in the number of decimal places you choose to display. For most everyday purposes, rounding to 2–3 decimal places in meters (or the nearest centimeter) is sufficient.
Height is often expressed as a combination of feet and inches, such as 5'10" (five feet ten inches). To convert this to meters:
Note that 0.0254 m/inch = 0.3048 m/ft ÷ 12 in/ft, so the math is completely consistent.
Here are the most frequently searched height conversions:
= 1.524 m / 152.4 cm
Near average female height in several Asian countries.
= 1.6764 m / 167.6 cm
Close to average female height in the US.
= 1.7526 m / 175.3 cm
Close to average male height globally.
= 1.8288 m / 182.9 cm
Above average male height in most countries.
= 1.8796 m / 188.0 cm
Tall; near average height of NBA players.
= 1.9812 m / 198.1 cm
Very tall; professional basketball range.
Despite the global dominance of the metric system, feet and inches remain the dominant unit for expressing personal height in the United States, and are still commonly used in the United Kingdom alongside metric values. This is largely a matter of cultural inertia: road signs, bathroom scales, and conversations have used the imperial system for generations, and people find it intuitive for the human-scale distances that matter most in daily life.
Medical forms, driver's licenses, and fitness apps in the US routinely ask for height in feet and inches. Internationally, however — particularly in medicine, sports science, and nutrition — centimeters and meters are preferred. If you use a European BMI calculator, a health app targeting international users, or a global fitness tracker, you will almost certainly need to know your height in meters.
In the United States, the construction industry uses the foot as the fundamental unit of measurement. Floor plans are drawn in feet, ceiling heights are quoted in feet (standard ceilings are typically 8 or 9 feet high), and lumber is sold in lengths of 8, 10, 12, or 16 feet. A standard US door is 6 feet 8 inches (2.032 m) tall. Foundation depths, roof pitches, and room dimensions all appear in feet on US building plans.
In contrast, European construction uses meters exclusively. A standard European ceiling height is 2.5 meters (8.2 ft), doors are typically 2.1 m (6.9 ft) tall, and floor plans are dimensioned in millimeters for precise specifications. International architects working across both markets must be fluent in both measurement systems to avoid costly errors.
The foot remains entrenched in many major sports, particularly those with American origins:
In globally governed sports — soccer/football, athletics, cycling, tennis — metric measurements are standard. FIFA specifies pitch dimensions in meters. The IAAF records all distances in meters. Tennis court dimensions (23.77 m × 8.23 m for singles) are metric by international convention.
One of the most important uses of feet in a metric world is in aviation. Altitude in commercial aviation is universally measured in feet rather than meters — a historical legacy of American and British dominance in early commercial aviation. Even in countries that use metric exclusively for everything else, air traffic controllers communicate altitude in feet. A cruising altitude of 35,000 feet is 10,668 meters; 10,000 feet, the altitude below which speed limits apply on approach, is 3,048 meters exactly.
This creates an interesting situation: China, which uses metric for all domestic purposes, had to adopt feet for its aviation sector to communicate with international air traffic. The ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) has debated switching to meters, but the transition cost and safety risks of a mixed-system transition period have kept feet as the aviation standard globally.
If you need a quick estimate without a calculator:
For medical, engineering, or official purposes, always use the exact factor of 0.3048 m/ft. Even a small rounding error can compound over many iterations or large distances. This converter uses the exact definition throughout.
Understanding common heights in both systems helps calibrate your intuition:
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