Meters to Feet Converter

Yes, exactly. The 1959 international yard and pound agreement, signed by the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, fixed the international yard at exactly 0.9144 m. Dividing by 3 gives 1 foot = 0.3048 m with no rounding, and dividing by 12 gives 1 inch = 0.0254 m = 2.54 cm. The US Survey foot (0.30480061 m) was retired from federal use on 1 January 2023, so the international foot is now the only standard everywhere it matters.

Multiply meters by 3.28 for a working answer, or by 3.28084 for full precision. For a quicker estimate, multiply by 3 and add 10 percent: a 5 m ceiling is roughly 5 x 3 + 5 x 0.3 = 16.5 ft (the exact value is 16.4 ft). To go the other way, divide feet by 3.28, or take a third and subtract a touch under 10 percent: 6 ft becomes 6 / 3 = 2, minus about 9 percent, which lands near 1.83 m (the exact value is 1.8288 m).

American framing lumber, drywall, plywood, and stud spacing are commonly sized in inches and feet. The supply chain, tools, building codes, and drawings all reinforce those dimensions. The 1975 Metric Conversion Act made metric the preferred system for trade but kept conversion voluntary, so US residential construction continues to use customary units.

The single quote is the foot mark and the double quote is the inch mark, both inherited from old surveying notation. 5'11" reads as five feet eleven inches, which equals 5 x 12 + 11 = 71 total inches, or 180.34 cm. The mark immediately to the right of the number tells you the unit. Sometimes you will see the same value written as 5 ft 11 in or 5-11, and the calculator shows the feet-and-inches breakdown whenever the value falls inside the human-height range.

An Olympic-size pool is 50 m long, which is about 164 ft. A short-course pool is 25 m long, about 82 ft. World Aquatics requires the 50 m pool for the Olympic Games and the long-course world championships, while short-course world records are set in 25 m pools. US recreational and high-school pools are often built to 25 yd (75 ft, about 22.86 m), which is shorter than the metric short-course standard and produces different race-time records. Lap counts also change: a 1500 m freestyle is 30 lengths of an Olympic pool but 60 lengths of a short-course pool.