How do you convert meters to feet?

The factor is a definition, not a measurement. In 1959 the international yard and pound agreement fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meters, and a foot is a third of a yard, so:

1 foot   =  0.9144 m ÷ 3      =  0.3048 m            exactly
1 meter  =  1 ÷ 0.3048 ft     =  3.280839895013123… ft

Four decimal places going one way, an endless run of digits coming back. As a fraction, a meter is 1250/381 feet, and 381 has factors that a decimal system cannot digest, so the digits repeat every 42 places and never stop. This is the whole reason the conversion feels lopsided: feet to meters is clean, meters to feet is not.

The two directions

Meters to feet: divide by 0.3048. A 2 m doorway:

2 ÷ 0.3048      =  6.561679790026246…   →  6.56 ft

Feet to meters: multiply by 0.3048. A 6 ft fence:

6 × 0.3048      =  1.8288 m             exact, no rounding needed

Multiplying by 3.28084 instead of dividing by 0.3048 lands in the same place and is easier to type. Just remember that 3.28084 is itself rounded, so it is a shortcut and not an equal sign. What that costs you is worked out further down, and the answer is reassuring.

Feet and inches, and the 5.9 trap

Nobody describes their height as 5.906 feet. Feet come with inches, and inches are twelfths, not tenths. So the decimal part of a feet figure has to be multiplied by 12 before it means anything. Take a height of 1.8 m:

1.8 ÷ 0.3048          =  5.905511811… ft
Whole feet            =  5
Decimal part × 12     =  0.905511811… × 12  =  10.866… in

1.8 m                 =  5 ft 10.9 in

The trap is reading 5.9 ft as "five foot nine". It is not. Nine tenths of a foot is 10.8 inches, so 5.9 ft is 5 ft 10.8 in, and the misreading shrinks a person by 1.8 inches, which is 4.572 cm. People have been left off basketball teams for less.

A cleaner route skips decimal feet entirely. An inch is exactly 0.0254 m, so go to inches first and then count out the twelves:

1.8 ÷ 0.0254     =  70.866141… in
70 in            =  5 × 12 + 10       →  5 ft 10 in
Left over        =  0.866… in

1.8 m            =  5 ft 10.866 in

If the answer is headed for a tape measure, turn the leftover decimal into sixteenths: 0.866 × 16 is 13.86, which rounds to 14/16, which is 7/8. So 1.8 m is 5 ft 10 7/8 in, about 0.2 mm over. For decimals that do not land so close to a tidy fraction, see how to convert a decimal to a fraction.

Doing it in your head: times three, plus ten percent

Three and a bit feet to the meter is what most people remember. The bit is very nearly a tenth of the three, which gives a two step estimate:

 20 m   →   20 × 3  =   60   →   60 + 6    =  66 ft
 Exact      20 ÷ 0.3048               =  65.616797…

100 m   →  100 × 3  =  300   →  300 + 30   =  330 ft
 Exact     100 ÷ 0.3048               =  328.083989…

That is multiplying by 3.3 when the true factor is 3.2808, so the estimate always runs high, and always by the same amount: 3.3 × 0.3048 = 1.00584, or 0.584% over. On 100 m that is 1.9 feet. If the percentage looks familiar, it is the same error as the five eighths trick for converting km to miles, and not by coincidence. A mile is 5280 feet, and 5/8 × 5.28 is exactly 3.3. It is one shortcut in two outfits.

Going the other way, multiply feet by 0.3. That runs about 1.6% low: 10 ft comes out as 3 m against a true 3.048 m, and 100 ft as 30 m against 30.48 m. Fine for a room, not for a staircase.

Conversion table: meters to feet

Conversion table: feet to meters

Every row here is exact. Multiplying by 0.3048 never produces more than four decimal places per whole foot, so there is nothing to round:

A height in feet and inches works the same way once it is all in inches. Multiply by 0.0254:

5 ft 10 in   =  5 × 12 + 10  =  70 in   →  70 × 0.0254  =  1.778 m
6 ft 2 in    =  6 × 12 + 2   =  74 in   →  74 × 0.0254  =  1.8796 m

Which foot? There used to be two

The 1959 agreement gave the United States the international foot of 0.3048 m, but the older foot was kept alive for land surveying under the name U.S. survey foot. It was defined as 1200/3937 of a meter:

International foot   =  0.3048 m             exactly
U.S. survey foot     =  1200 ÷ 3937 m       =  0.3048006096… m

Ratio                =  1.000002            2 parts per million

Two parts per million is nothing on a building site. On a map it adds up, because survey coordinates can run to millions of feet, and over one million feet the two definitions disagree by 0.6096 m, which is two feet almost to the hair. The National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Geodetic Survey retired the survey foot after 31 December 2022, so a foot is now 0.3048 m everywhere. Old survey data did not get the memo, which is worth knowing if you ever inherit some.

Where the rounded factor costs you

The five decimal factor is better than it has any right to be. Over a full kilometer:

Exact       1000 ÷ 0.3048     =  3280.839895… ft
3.28084     1000 × 3.28084    =  3280.84 ft        over by  0.032 mm
3.28        1000 × 3.28       =  3280 ft           short by 25.6 cm
3.3         1000 × 3.3        =  3300 ft           over by  19.16 ft

So 3.28084 is safe for anything short of surveying, 3.28 is fine for a room, and 3.3 is for conversation only.

The binary arithmetic underneath is a different story. Three feet make a yard, so 3 × 0.3048 should be 0.9144, the very number the 1959 agreement was built on. A machine working in binary floating point answers 0.9144000000000001, because 0.3048 has no exact binary form. That stray 1 is the same fault behind 0.1 + 0.2 = 0.30000000000000004, and it is why long chains of conversions drift. Prism holds 0.3048 as the exact fraction it is, so 3 ft converts to 0.9144 m and 6 ft to 1.8288 m, with nothing hiding in the sixteenth decimal place.

Or let the unit converter hold the factor

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