Measure Height 
How the conversion works
There is one number behind every height conversion: 1 inch = 2.54 cm, exactly. That has been the legal definition since the 1959 international yard and pound agreement, so there is nothing approximate about it. A foot is 12 inches, which makes it 30.48 cm.
- cm to feet and inches: divide by 2.54 to get total inches, then divide by 12. The whole number is feet and the remainder is inches.
- Feet and inches to cm: feet × 12 + inches, then multiply by 2.54.
- Metres: centimetres divided by 100. 1.75 m and 175 cm are the same height.
The converter shows exact centimetres to two decimals and feet and inches to the nearest half inch, because nobody measures a person more precisely than that at home. If you want to know how to get a reading that is good to half an inch, the wall and book method is the one clinics use.
Worked examples
| Input | Working | Exact | Rounded |
|---|---|---|---|
| 170 cm | 170 / 2.54 = 66.93 in | 5 ft 6.93 in | 5'7" |
| 183 cm | 183 / 2.54 = 72.05 in | 6 ft 0.05 in | 6'0" |
| 5'4" | (5 × 12 + 4) × 2.54 | 162.56 cm | 163 cm |
| 6'2" | (6 × 12 + 2) × 2.54 | 187.96 cm | 188 cm |
| 1.68 m | 168 / 2.54 = 66.14 in | 5 ft 6.14 in | 5'6" |
Feet and inches to cm chart
Every second inch from 4'10" to 6'6", the range most adults fall in.
| Feet and inches | Centimetres |
|---|---|
| 4'10" | 147.3 cm |
| 5'0" | 152.4 cm |
| 5'2" | 157.5 cm |
| 5'4" | 162.6 cm |
| 5'6" | 167.6 cm |
| 5'8" | 172.7 cm |
| 5'10" | 177.8 cm |
| 6'0" | 182.9 cm |
| 6'2" | 188.0 cm |
| 6'4" | 193.0 cm |
| 6'6" | 198.1 cm |
Rounding is where people get it wrong
The maths is trivial. The mistakes come from rounding. Two that come up constantly:
- Truncating instead of rounding. 177 cm is 69.69 inches. Chopping the decimal gives 5'9", but the nearest inch is 5'10". A form that asks for whole inches wants the nearest one.
- Reading decimal feet as inches. 5.9 feet is not 5'9". It is 5 feet and 10.8 inches, because 0.9 of a foot is 10.8 inches. Spreadsheets and some apps export height as decimal feet, and this is where a 5'11" person becomes 5'9" on paper.
If you are converting a child's height to compare with a growth chart, keep the decimals. A rounding error of half an inch can move a percentile by several points at young ages. The height predictor takes either unit directly, so there is no need to convert first.
Questions
How many centimetres is 5 foot 7?
170.18 cm. Five feet is 60 inches, plus 7 makes 67, and 67 × 2.54 = 170.18. Most people round that to 170 cm.
What is 6 feet in cm?
Exactly 182.88 cm. Six feet is 72 inches and every inch is 2.54 cm by definition.
Is 170 cm 5'7 or 5'6?
170 cm is 66.93 inches, which is 5 ft 6.93 in. To the nearest inch that is 5'7". Rounding down to 5'6" throws away almost a full inch.
Why does the converter read 69 as centimetres?
A bare number between 3 and 8.5 is read as feet and between 0.5 and 3 as metres, because nobody is 6 cm tall. Anything larger could be inches or centimetres, so it defaults to centimetres and shows a link to switch. Type 69 in or 69" to force inches.
Is the conversion exact?
Yes. Since 1959 the inch has been defined as exactly 2.54 cm, so cm to inches has no approximation in it. The only rounding is the one you choose for the answer: this page shows exact decimals and the nearest half inch.