Height converter
This converts centimetres to total inches. For feet and inches, divide by twelve and keep the remainder: 175 cm is 68.9 inches, which is 5 feet 8.9 inches, normally given as 5 foot 9.
How to convert a height
Feet and inches is not a decimal system, and this is the step almost everyone gets wrong at least once. 5.9 feet is not 5 foot 9. It is 5 feet plus 0.9 of a foot, and 0.9 times twelve is 10.8, so 5.9 ft is 5 foot 10.8. A whole inch of error, which on a passport form or a dating profile is a visible one. Take the whole feet, then multiply what is left by twelve.
Four anchors turn most of these conversions into mental arithmetic. 5 foot even is 152.4 cm. 5 foot 6 is 167.64. 5 foot 10 is 177.8. 6 foot is 182.88. Each inch is 2.54 cm, so a height one inch either side of an anchor moves by two and a half centimetres. From those four numbers you can place any adult height within a centimetre without a calculator.
A note on the American shorthand. US driving licences and forms often write a height as three digits with no punctuation, so 511 means 5 foot 11 and not five hundred and eleven, and 60 means 6 foot 0. Read as a decimal that becomes 5.11 feet, which is 5 foot 1.3, a nine-inch error in the wrong direction. Anything that ingests those digits needs to split them rather than parse them.
Rounding is not a problem here, it is the correct answer. Passport and medical forms want whole centimetres. Measured height genuinely changes through the day as the spinal discs compress under load, so the same person measures taller in the morning than in the evening, by more than the precision this page prints. Anything past the whole centimetre is arithmetic rather than a fact about the body.
What people use it for
- Entering a height in whole centimetres on a passport or medical form
- Reading a driving licence or dating profile that gives a height as 5 foot 11
- Checking a 4 foot 7 ride minimum against a height measured in centimetres
- Working out that a listed 5.9 ft is 5 foot 10.8, not 5 foot 9
- Converting a child's height for a growth chart printed in the other system
- Reading a US form where the height is written as three digits with no punctuation
Questions
68.9 inches, which is 5 foot 8.9 and is normally given as 5 foot 9.
No. 5.9 feet is 5 foot 10.8. Multiply the decimal part by twelve to get the inches.
182.88 exactly, usually written as 183.
Multiply the feet by twelve, add the inches, then multiply by 2.54. 5 foot 9 is 69 inches, which is 175.26 cm.
5 foot 11, written as three digits with no punctuation. Read as a decimal it becomes 5 foot 1.3, which is nine inches out.
It is a single-pair converter, so it gives one number. Dividing by twelve is the last step and it is easier to see than to hide.
Exactly 2.54, by international definition, which is why every conversion here is exact rather than approximate.
5 foot is 152.4, 5 foot 6 is 167.64, 5 foot 10 is 177.8 and 6 foot is 182.88. Each further inch adds 2.54.
Yes, to the nearest centimetre. Any form expects it, and measured height varies through the day by more than the extra digits are worth.
The discs in the spine compress under a day of load and recover overnight. It is the reason a height measured at a morning appointment reads higher than one taken after work.
The common ones are 4 foot, 4 foot 3 and 4 foot 7, which are 121.9, 129.5 and 139.7 cm. Measure with the shoes the child will be wearing.
Keep one column in centimetres and derive the rest from it. Storing a height as the text 5 foot 9 is what makes a column of heights impossible to sort or average.
Yes. The direction is kept in this browser, so the page opens the way you last left it.
No. It is one multiplication and it runs in this page as you type.