Height, room dimensions, and sports stats live in feet across the United States, while the rest of the planet — plus every science class — measures in meters, and the translation between them is one of the most-searched conversions on Earth. The foot is defined as exactly 0.3048 meters, so the math is a single multiplication: feet times 0.3048. Type 6 into the Feet (ft) box and the Meters (m) readout shows 1.8288; the bonus boxes add 182.88 Centimeters (cm) and 72 Inches (in). That 0.3048 is exact by international agreement since 1959, which ended the era of slightly different American and British feet. Real-estate listings, track-and-field results, and furniture specs all cross this bridge daily — a 10-foot ceiling is 3.048 meters, and a 26.2-mile marathon is 42,195 meters of effort in either unit. For quick mental math, multiply feet by 0.3 and nudge up a touch; for exact answers, type the number here and read all four units at once.

The math in one line.

One foot equals exactly 0.3048 meters — not 0.3, not 0.305, but the full four-decimal figure — so the entire conversion is a single multiplication. Six feet becomes 6 times 0.3048 = 1.8288 meters. One hundred feet becomes 100 times 0.3048 = 30.48 meters. The 32,500-foot cruising altitude of a commercial jet becomes 32,500 times 0.3048 = 9,906 meters. Going the other direction, divide meters by 0.3048, which is the same as multiplying by 3.28084: a 2-meter doorway is 2 times 3.28084 = 6.5617 feet, and the 100-meter dash is 100 times 3.28084 = 328.08 feet of sprinting. The converter on this page runs both directions the instant you type, and it keeps centimeters and inches alongside meters, so one entry answers every version of how long is that really.

Mental-math shortcuts that work.

Multiply feet by 0.3, then add back a correction of feet times 0.0048 — that is the whole trick, and it is exact, not an approximation. Ten feet times 0.3 = 3, plus 10 times 0.0048 = 0.048, gives 3.048 meters, the true figure. For a 6-foot person: 6 times 0.3 = 1.8, plus 6 times 0.0048 = 0.0288, gives 1.8288 meters. After a few tries the correction becomes automatic — just nudge the 0.3 estimate up by roughly half a percent. Going the other way, meters to feet, multiply by 3.3 and subtract a touch: 2 meters times 3.3 = 6.6 feet against the true 6.5617, so the quick version lands within half a percent. The lazy version (feet times 0.3, or meters times 3.3) is fine for picturing a room; use the real factor for anything you will build, buy, or sign.

An anchor ladder for the most common lengths.

One foot is 0.3048 meters — the definition itself. Three feet is 0.9144 meters, one yard. Five feet is 1.524 meters, a short adult. Six feet is 1.8288 meters, the classic tall mark. Eight feet is 2.4384 meters, the standard American ceiling height. Ten feet is 3.048 meters, a basketball rim. Twenty-five feet is 7.62 meters, a city bus. One hundred feet is 30.48 meters, about a ten-story drop. On the reverse side: one meter is 3.28084 feet, two meters is 6.5617 feet, and ten meters is 32.8084 feet. With this ladder in your head, you can place almost any measurement — a 40-foot shipping container is 12.192 meters, a 12-foot ladder is 3.6576 meters — without reaching for a calculator.

Heights: the most personal conversion on this page.

Five foot nine — 69 inches — is 1.7526 meters, one of the most searched heights in the US because it sits near the average for American men. Five foot ten is 70 inches, or 1.778 meters. Six feet is 1.8288 meters, and six foot two is 74 inches, or 1.8796 meters. The average American woman is about 5 foot 4, which is 1.6256 meters. Doctors' offices record height in feet and inches while most of the world's medical charts want meters or centimeters; children's growth charts, sports tryouts, and passport forms all mix the two. To convert any feet-and-inches height, turn it into total inches first, then multiply by 0.0254 — five foot six is 66 inches times 0.0254 = 1.6764 meters.

Rooms, ceilings, and real estate.

American homes are dimensioned in feet, and the ceiling height tells the story: 8-foot ceilings are 2.4384 meters, 9-foot ceilings are 2.7432 meters, and the coveted 10-foot ceiling is 3.048 meters. A 12-by-14-foot bedroom is 3.6576 by 4.2672 meters. When listings cross the Atlantic, areas convert too: one square meter is 10.7639 square feet, so an 800-square-foot apartment is about 74.32 square meters, and a 2,000-square-foot house is about 185.81 square meters. European buyers reading American listings — and American buyers reading European ones — both end up here. Note that this page converts linear feet; for floor area, square the linear factor or use a dedicated area converter.

Sports: where meters own the record books.

Track and field is metric worldwide, which is why American fans constantly translate: the 100-meter dash is 328.08 feet, and the marathon's 42.195 kilometers are 138,435 feet — though everyone just says 26.2 miles. A soccer goal is 8 feet high and 24 feet wide, which is 2.4384 by 7.3152 meters. A basketball rim hangs 10 feet up — 3.048 meters — and the tennis net dips to 3 feet at center, or 0.9144 meters. Swimming pools flip it around: the Olympic 50-meter pool is 164.04 feet long. If you follow international sports with an American ruler in your head, these anchors make the commentary make sense.

Furniture, trucks, and moving day.

A standard 40-foot shipping container is 12.192 meters long; the 20-foot version is 6.096 meters. Moving trucks are sold by the foot — a 26-foot box truck is 7.9248 meters of cargo space. Flat-pack furniture lists dimensions in centimeters, so an American buyer converts the other direction: the 200 cm sofa is 6.5617 feet long, and the 80 cm bookshelf is 2.6247 feet wide. Whenever the tape measure and the listing disagree, convert once with the exact factor and measure twice in the unit you trust.

Why exactly 0.3048? The 1959 agreement.

Before 1959, the American foot and the British foot differed by a couple of parts per million — a rounding error in a hallway, a real problem in a jet engine. The US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa agreed to define the international yard as exactly 0.9144 meters, which fixed the foot at exactly 0.3048 meters. Surveyors kept a separate US survey foot — 0.3048006 meters, two parts per million longer — for legacy land records, but NIST retired it on January 1, 2023, ending a quiet dual-unit era that had confused American surveyors for over sixty years. The foot you use today is the international one, exact and final.

Altitude and aviation.

Aviation is one of the last strongholds of feet: flight levels are assigned in hundreds of feet worldwide, so pilots everywhere think in feet even over metric countries. A cruising altitude of 35,000 feet is 10,668 meters. Mount Everest's 29,032 feet is about 8,849 meters. When European weather reports give cloud ceilings in meters, American pilots convert without thinking — and passengers checking the seatback map can too. The clean math helps: 10,000 feet is 3,048 meters, almost exactly 3 kilometers, so every 10,000-foot band of sky is about 3 km thick.

For students and teachers.

The 0.3048 factor is exact, which makes it a favorite for dimensional analysis: feet times (0.3048 m / 1 ft) cancels the feet and leaves meters, and the units cancel exactly like numbers do. A 12-inch ruler is 30.48 cm, which is 0.3048 meters — no coincidence, since 12 times 0.0254 = 0.3048. Teachers use this pair to show that conversion factors are really just the number one in disguise: 0.3048 meters per foot equals one, because both sides name the same length. Students also meet the reverse constant 3.28084 in physics problems — a 1.5-meter person is 4.9213 feet — and the same unit-cancellation trick works in both directions. Once the idea clicks that the factor is exact rather than measured, rounding it to 0.3 starts to feel like the small betrayal it is.

Mistakes to avoid.

Three traps catch people. First, rounding 0.3048 to 0.3: fine for a hallway, but across 100 feet it misses by 48 centimeters — nearly a foot and a half — so never round on anything you will build or buy. Second, mixing up the foot with the survey foot on old documents: if a pre-2023 survey says feet, confirm which foot it meant before doing boundary math. Third, the spelling: American English writes meter, British English writes metre — same unit, different letter, and search engines treat them as the same question. And one style note: the plural of foot is feet, but the unit symbol ft never takes an s — 6 ft, not 6 fts. Get those details right and every feet-to-meters conversion you ever make will land exactly where it should.

With the pre-filled defaults — Feet (ft) 6 — the Feet to Meters returns Meters (m) 1.828800, Centimeters (cm) 182.8800, Inches (in) 72.0000. Change any input and those results update instantly, so you can see exactly how each number you enter moves the answer.