Length conversion trips up travelers, shoppers, and students: a height in meters, a room in feet, a screen in inches. This guide shows you the conversions by hand, with a worked height example.
The units you will meet
Metric lengths are decimal: 1 meter equals 100 centimeters, and 1 kilometer equals 1,000 meters. Imperial lengths are not: 1 foot equals 12 inches, 1 yard equals 3 feet, and 1 mile equals 5,280 feet. That mismatch is why conversions need care.
The key conversion factors
- 1 inch equals 2.54 centimeters, exactly.
- 1 foot equals 30.48 centimeters, or 0.3048 meters.
- 1 meter equals 3.28084 feet.
- 1 yard equals 0.9144 meters.
- 1 mile equals 1.60934 kilometers.
Step-by-step: convert a height
Take a height of 1.75 meters and convert it to feet and inches. First multiply by 3.28084: 1.75 times 3.28084 equals 5.74147 feet. The whole number, 5, is the feet. Take the decimal part, 0.74147, and multiply by 12 to get inches: 0.74147 times 12 equals 8.9 inches. So 1.75 meters is about 5 feet 9 inches.
Converting the other way
To convert feet and inches to meters, convert everything to inches first, then multiply by 2.54, then divide by 100. For 5 feet 9 inches: 5 times 12 plus 9 equals 69 inches. 69 times 2.54 equals 175.26 centimeters, which is 1.7526 meters. Doing the inches step first avoids the rounding errors that come from converting feet and inches separately.
Common mistakes
Rounding too early is the classic error: rounding the feet before converting the remainder to inches can shift the result by a full inch. Another is mixing up feet and inches notation: 5’9″ means 5 feet 9 inches, not 5.9 feet. And always double-check results that look wrong: a converter claiming 1.7272 meters equals 0 feet 0 inches has clearly failed, and a quick hand check catches it.
Try it the faster way
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Quick tips
- Convert to the smallest unit first (inches or centimeters), then to the target unit.
- Keep two decimal places during the calculation and round only at the end.
- Sanity-check: 1.8 meters is roughly 5 feet 11 inches, and 6 feet is roughly 1.83 meters.
Length conversion is just multiplication by a fixed factor, done in the right order. Convert to the smallest unit, multiply, and round last.
Frequently asked questions
What is the exact conversion from inches to centimeters? Exactly 2.54 centimeters per inch, by international agreement since 1959. This makes inch-to-metric conversions exact, while foot-to-meter conversions derive from it: one foot is exactly 30.48 centimeters.
Why do height converters sometimes disagree by an inch? Usually rounding: one converter rounds the feet before converting the remainder, while another converts the full decimal. The difference is normally under an inch, but it shows why you should round only at the final step.
How do I convert square or cubic units? Square the linear factor for area and cube it for volume. One square meter is about 10.764 square feet, not 3.281, because area scales with the square of length. Forgetting to square or cube the factor is the most common area-conversion error.
Worked example
Convert 6 feet 2 inches to meters. First convert everything to inches: 6 times 12 plus 2 equals 74 inches. Multiply by 2.54 to get centimeters: 74 times 2.54 equals 187.96 centimeters, which is 1.8796 meters, about 1.88 meters. Going the other way, convert 1.88 meters to feet: multiply by 3.28084 to get 6.168 feet. The whole number is 6 feet, and the remainder 0.168 times 12 gives about 2 inches. The round trip lands back at 6 feet 2 inches, confirming the maths.