Meters to Feet

The meter was introduced in revolutionary France in the 1790s as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator along the meridian through Paris. That survey was slightly off, and from 1889 the official meter was the length of a platinum-iridium bar kept at Sèvres. In 1960 it was redefined by a wavelength of light from krypton-86, and since 1983 it has been the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

The foot is tied to that definition: 0.3048 m exactly, since 1959. So 1 m is 1/0.3048 ft, which is 3.280839895… ft, a number that never terminates. Most tools round it to 3.28084, which is accurate to well under a millimeter for anything a tape measure can reach.

Many people who grew up with feet still picture sizes that way. A 2 m door is 6.56 ft, or 6 ft 6.7 in, which is why tall visitors duck through European doorways less often than they expect. An Olympic swimming pool is 50 m long, 164 ft, and the 10 m diving platform is 32.8 ft above the water, about the height of a three-story building.

Apartment listings outside the US give ceiling height in meters: 2.5 m is 8.2 ft, and the 2.7 m ceilings advertised in new buildings are 8.86 ft. Track events too: the 100 m sprint is 328 ft, a little longer than an American football field between goal lines.

A decimal foot is not feet plus inches. 1.75 m is 5.74 ft, and 0.74 of a foot is 8.9 inches, so the height is 5 ft 8.9 in, usually said as 5 ft 9 in. Reading 5.74 as 5 ft 7 in loses almost two inches. Multiply the decimal part by 12 to get the inches.

For a mental estimate, multiply by 3 and add 10%: 4 m gives 12 plus 1.2, or 13.2 ft, against the exact 13.12 ft. To convert back, see feet to meters; other length pairs are in the unit converter.