Feet to Centimetres

How to use Feet to CM Converter

1. 1
   Convert inches to a decimal. Divide the inches by twelve and add — 5 ft 9 in becomes 5.75.
2. 2
   Read the centimetres. With metres shown underneath.

About converting feet to centimetres

Height is the conversion people get wrong most often, and almost always in the same way: writing five foot nine as 5.9. Feet are divided into twelve inches, so nine inches is 0.75 of a foot, not 0.9. The difference is four and a half centimetres, which is the gap between two noticeably different heights. Converting the inches separately and adding is the safer habit — nine inches is 22.86 cm, five feet is 152.4 cm, and the sum is 175.26. Beyond arithmetic, height is less precise than a converted decimal suggests. Everyone is measurably taller in the morning than in the evening, by roughly one to two centimetres, because spinal discs compress over the day; heights recorded at a medical appointment and at home routinely disagree for that reason alone. Footwear, posture and whether the measurer pressed the head down all move the figure further. This is why medical and official forms ask for a whole centimetre or a whole inch and why converting to two decimals gives a number more precise than the measurement behind it. Round the result, and use the same time of day if you are comparing measurements over time.

Frequently asked questions