📏 Feet to Cm Converter
Convert feet to centimetres and back. The exact factor, a table of the values people look up most, and what each unit is actually used for.
Converting feet to centimetres
One foot is 30.48 centimetres, and one centimetre is 0.03280839895 feet.
centimetres = feet × 30.48
Getting the precision right
One foot is exactly 30.48 cm, so again the conversion is definitional. Heights are the awkward case because they are given in mixed units: 5 ft 10 in is 5.833 feet, not 5.10 feet, and typing the second into a calculator is the usual source of a wrong answer.
Where each unit is used
Feet are used for human height and building dimensions in the United States and, for height, still conversationally in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Aviation worldwide reports altitude in feet regardless of the country, which is one of the few genuinely global uses of an imperial unit.
Values worth knowing
| ft | cm |
|---|---|
| 1 | 30.48 |
| 2 | 60.96 |
| 3 | 91.44 |
| 4 | 121.92 |
| 5 | 152.4 |
| 5.5 | 167.64 |
| 6 | 182.88 |
| 6.5 | 198.12 |
| 7 | 213.36 |
| 10 | 304.8 |
5 ft 10 in is 177.8 cm. A standard door is about 6 ft 8 in, or 203 cm. A basketball hoop at 10 feet is 305 cm.
Where the two units came from
The foot was never one length. The Roman pes was about 29.6 cm, the Greek pous varied by city, and medieval England had several competing feet at once. What settled it was not anatomy but commerce: the 1959 international agreement fixed the foot at exactly 0.3048 metres. The United States kept a separate survey foot, two parts per million longer, for land records until it was officially retired at the end of 2022 — a difference that was irrelevant in a room and significant across a county.
Round the result to the precision your own work needs. These converters carry the full factor, which is useful for checking but rarely what you want to write down.
Most people arrive here on the way to something else, so it is worth knowing the cm to inches, which handles the next part, and the miles to km, which covers the case just beyond.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How many centimetres are in a foot?
Exactly 30.48, following from the definition of an inch as 2.54 cm. Twelve inches multiplied by 2.54 gives 30.48 with no rounding.
How do I enter 5 foot 10 correctly?
As 5 feet plus 10 inches, not as 5.10 feet. Ten inches is ten twelfths of a foot, so the decimal equivalent is 5.833 feet, which is 177.8 cm. Entering 5.10 gives 155.4 cm, which is nobody's height.
Why does aviation use feet?
Because international air traffic standardised on them for altitude and most countries kept the convention for compatibility rather than switch unilaterally. A few, including China and Russia, historically used metres, which has been a recognised safety hazard at borders.