Square Meters to Square Feet

Apartments in Europe, Latin America, Australia, China and most of the world are listed in square meters, so American buyers and expats often need a quick sense of scale. A 35 m² studio is 377 sq ft, a 70 m² two-bedroom flat is 753 sq ft, and a 120 m² family home is about 1,292 sq ft. If a listing says 85 m², think of it as a roughly 900 sq ft place, not an 85-foot one.

Hong Kong and Singapore are exceptions where square feet remain the norm even under metric law, and Japan often uses its own tsubo, about 3.306 m² or 35.6 sq ft. When a listing gives a figure in an unfamiliar unit, convert it to square meters first, then use this page.

Prices go the opposite way from areas. Because a square meter is 10.764 times larger than a square foot, a price per m² must be divided by 10.764 to give a price per sq ft. A Paris flat at €10,000 per m² works out to about €929 per sq ft; a Lisbon one at €5,000 per m² is about €465 per sq ft. Multiplying the price by 10.764 by mistake makes housing look ten times dearer than it is.

Flooring, paint and tiles follow the same logic. A box of laminate labeled 2.13 m² covers about 22.9 sq ft. Add 5–10% for offcuts whichever unit you use, and round up to whole boxes after converting, not before.

For a listing, whole square feet are plenty; measured floor areas are rarely better than ±1%. For construction drawings and quotes, keep two decimals and convert the area once at the end rather than converting each wall. The exact factor is 1 ÷ 0.09290304 = 10.7639104…, and the square feet to square meters page explains why the decimals never end in this direction. For land, hectares and acres are more natural units; see hectares to acres.