Length converter
Every unit at once, not one pair. Metres, feet, inches, miles and the rest.
Every unit, not one pair
A search engine will convert one unit into one other unit and stop. That is fine when you already know which pair you want, and unhelpful the rest of the time, which is most of the time.
A 180 cm sofa needs checking in feet and inches against a doorway. A race distance makes sense in miles and kilometres together. This shows the whole family at once, so the comparison is there without converting twice.
The imperial units are defined in metric
Since 1959 an inch has been exactly 2.54 centimetres, by international agreement. Not approximately: exactly. A foot is exactly 0.3048 m, a yard exactly 0.9144 m, a mile exactly 1,609.344 m.
So every figure on this page is exact arithmetic rather than a measured approximation, and a round trip from metres to feet and back returns precisely what you started with.
Britain never finished converting
Road signs are in miles, and speed limits in miles per hour. Height is given in feet and inches, and a pub sells beer in pints. Almost everything else is metric, including everything sold by weight and every plan an architect draws.
That is why a page like this gets used at all: the country runs both systems at once and expects everyone to hold the conversion in their head.
Common questions
- How many centimetres are in an inch?
- Exactly 2.54. That is not an approximation: since 1959 the inch has been defined as 2.54 centimetres by international agreement, so every imperial length is now formally derived from the metric one. A foot is exactly 0.3048 m and a mile exactly 1,609.344 m.
- Why does this show every unit at once?
- Because the question behind a conversion is usually comparative. Somebody checking a 180 cm sofa against a doorway wants feet and inches; somebody reading a running distance wants miles and kilometres together. Showing one pair makes you convert twice.
- How do I write my height in feet and inches?
- Take the total inches and divide by 12: the whole number is feet and the remainder is inches. 180 cm is 70.87 inches, so 5 feet 10.9 inches, which everybody rounds to 5 foot 11.
- Is a nautical mile the same as a mile?
- No. A nautical mile is 1,852 m against a statute mile's 1,609 m, about 15% longer. It is one minute of latitude, which is why it is used at sea and in the air. This page uses the statute mile.