Centimetres to Feet and Inches

How to use CM to Feet Converter

1. 1
   Enter the height in centimetres. Decimals are fine.
2. 2
   Read feet and inches. The decimal figure and the spoken form are both shown.

About converting centimetres to feet

Converting a height from centimetres to feet is arithmetic with one trap in it, and the trap catches almost everyone at least once. Dividing by 30.48 gives a decimal number of feet, and the part after the point is a fraction of twelve inches rather than of ten. Reading 5.74 feet as five foot seven is wrong by nearly two inches, because 0.74 of a foot is 8.9 inches. Multiplying the decimal remainder by twelve is what converts it, and it is why any height conversion worth using shows feet and inches separately rather than a single decimal. The reason this conversion is needed so often is that measurement systems did not change uniformly across categories. The United Kingdom is officially metric and has been for decades, but personal height and body weight stayed imperial in conversation, so a British person will be recorded as 175 cm in a medical file and describe themselves as five foot nine in a pub. The United States uses feet and inches throughout. Most of the rest of the world uses centimetres for everything, which means an international document, a sports profile or a dating app has to carry both. A few reference points are worth committing to memory since they come up repeatedly: five foot is 152 cm, five foot six is 168, five foot ten is 178, and six foot is 183.

Frequently asked questions