Feet to Meters Converter

Feet to Meters

Convert feet (ft) to meters (m). Both measure distance and dimension, and the conversion comes up in construction, navigation, sports work.

The Formula

`` meters = feet × 0.3048 feet = meters × 3.28083989501 `

One foot is 0.3048 meters, and one meter is 3.2808 feet.

Conversion Table

Feet	Meters
1 ft	0.3048 m
2 ft	0.6096 m
5 ft	1.524 m
10 ft	3.048 m
25 ft	7.62 m
50 ft	15.24 m
100 ft	30.48 m
500 ft	152.4 m
1,000 ft	304.8 m

The Other Direction

Meters	Feet
1 m	3.2808 ft
2 m	6.5617 ft
5 m	16.4042 ft
10 m	32.8084 ft
25 m	82.021 ft
50 m	164.042 ft
100 m	328.084 ft
500 m	1,640.42 ft
1,000 m	3,280.84 ft

What Each Unit Is

Feet (ft) — exactly 0.3048 metres, or one third of a yard. A human foot, standardised across centuries of conflicting local definitions.

Meters (m) — the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second — the SI base unit of length. Defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole, then by a platinum bar, and since 1983 by the speed of light.

A Sense of Scale

• A ceiling is 8–9 ft
• Aviation altitude is always in feet
• A door is about 6.7 ft
• A doorway is about 2 m tall
• An Olympic pool is 50 m
• A city block is 80–120 m

Doing It in Your Head

Multiply by 3, then divide by 10. That is off by 1.57% — close enough to judge a distance, a weight or a price, and not close enough to sign off on a drawing.

Exact	Mental shortcut
3.048 m	3 m
30.48 m	30 m

Precision

The factor 0.3048 is exact by international agreement, not a rounded approximation. Any imprecision in a result comes from your input, not the conversion.

In Code

`javascript const footToMeter = (value) => value * 0.3048; ``

Where This Conversion Comes Up

• Construction
• Navigation
• Sports
• Sewing
• Mapping

How Many Decimals Do You Need?

Rounding the factor costs accuracy, and how much depends on the factor. Converting 137 ft with the factor truncated at each decimal place:

Decimals kept	Factor	137 ft becomes	Error
0	0	0	100.0000%
1	0.3	41.1	1.5748%
2	0.3	41.1	1.5748%
3	0.305	41.785	0.0656%
4	0.3048	41.7576	—

A rule that holds for any conversion: round once, at the end. Rounding the factor and then multiplying compounds the error through every subsequent calculation, while carrying full precision and rounding the final answer does not.

The right number of significant figures is set by your input, not by the converter. If you measured feet to three significant figures, the answer in meters is only good to three — writing more digits claims precision the measurement never had.