Area Converter

About the Area Converter

Area measures how much surface something covers — a floor, a wall, a garden, a field or a whole country. Property listings give floor space in square feet or square metres, farmland is sold by the acre or hectare, and maps describe regions in square kilometres or square miles. Because area units are squared lengths, converting them is a common source of errors: a metre may be about 3.28 feet, but a square metre is nearly 10.8 square feet.

This area converter converts between ten units of area: square millimetres, centimetres, metres and kilometres, hectares, square inches, feet, yards and miles, and acres. It shows the result, the exact factor both ways, the area in every other unit, and the side of a square with the same area, which helps picture it.

How to Use the Area Converter

Enter the value of the area.

Choose the unit to convert from and to.

The converted area appears with the factor, the area in all the other units and the side length of an equal square.

If you only have a length and a width, multiply them first, in the same unit, to get the area — then convert.

How Area Conversion Works

An area unit is a length unit squared, so its size is the length factor squared:

  1 ft = 0.3048 m         →  1 ft² = 0.3048² = 0.09290304 m²
  1 in = 0.0254 m         →  1 in² = 0.00064516 m²
  1 yd = 0.9144 m         →  1 yd² = 0.83612736 m²
  1 mi = 1,609.344 m      →  1 mi² = 2,589,988.11 m²

  1 hectare = 10,000 m²   (a square 100 m × 100 m)
  1 acre    = 43,560 ft² = 4,046.8564224 m²

  result = value × (from-unit in m²) ÷ (to-unit in m²)

Step-by-Step Example: Floor Space

100 m² to square feet.

  100 ÷ 0.09290304 = 1,076.39 ft²

A 100 square metre home is about 1,076.39 square feet. To go the other way, multiply square feet by 0.09290304: 1,500 ft² is about 139.355 m².

Step-by-Step Example: Land

1 acre to square feet and hectares.

  To square feet:  4,046.8564224 ÷ 0.09290304 = 43,560 ft²
  To hectares:     4,046.8564224 ÷ 10,000 = 0.404686 ha

An acre is exactly 43,560 square feet, about 0.404686 hectares. A square acre would be about 208.71 feet, or 63.6149 metres, on each side. Going the other way, a hectare is about 2.47105 acres.

Quick Reference

  1 m²   = 10.7639 ft²       1 ft²  = 0.092903 m²
  1 m²   = 1.19599 yd²       1 yd²  = 0.836127 m²
  1 ha   = 2.47105 acres     1 acre = 0.404686 ha
  1 km²  = 100 ha            1 mi²  = 640 acres = 2.58999 km²
  1 cm²  = 0.155 in²         1 in²  = 6.4516 cm²

Why You Must Square the Factor

Imagine a square one metre on each side. Measured in feet, each side is 3.28084 feet, so its area is 3.28084 × 3.28084 = 10.7639 square feet. Using the length factor alone would give 3.28 square feet — less than a third of the true figure. The same applies in every direction: to convert square yards to square metres, square the yard's 0.9144 m to get 0.836127.

Volumes follow the same logic with a cube: a cubic metre is 3.28084³, about 35.3147 cubic feet.

Land Units

The acre came from the area a team of oxen could plough in a day, standardised as a strip one furlong (660 feet) long and one chain (66 feet) wide: 660 × 66 = 43,560 square feet. A square mile holds exactly 640 acres. The hectare, 10,000 square metres, is the metric unit for land and is used for farms, forests and parks in most of the world; one square kilometre is 100 hectares.

Floor Plans and Rooms

For a rectangular room, area is length × width. A room 12 feet by 15 feet covers 180 square feet, which is 180 × 0.09290304 = 16.7225 square metres. For an L-shaped room, split it into rectangles and add their areas. When buying flooring or tiles, add 5 to 10 percent for cutting and waste, and check whether the product is priced per square foot or square metre, since one is nearly eleven times the other.

Property Listings

Floor areas in listings are not always measured the same way. Some include walls, stairs and garages; others count only usable interior space. When comparing homes across countries, convert to the same unit and check what is included: a difference of 10 percent or more in quoted size can come from the measuring standard rather than the building.

Picturing an Area

Areas are hard to imagine from a number alone, so the converter also gives the side of a square with the same area. A tennis court, doubles lines included, is about 261 square metres; a football pitch around 7,000; and Central Park in New York about 341 hectares. A hectare is roughly one and a half football pitches, and an acre a little over half of one. Comparing an unfamiliar figure with a familiar space is often the quickest check that a conversion makes sense.

Understanding Your Result

The headline is the converted area.

The conversion factor gives the exact factor in both directions.

The in every unit line shows the area in all ten units.

The also line gives the side of a square with the same area, in metres and feet.

When Should You Use This Calculator?

Use it to compare homes and offices listed in square feet or square metres.

Use it for flooring, paint, turf and tiling quantities.

Use it for land, farms and plots measured in acres or hectares.

Use it for geography and science, where areas are given in km² or mi².

Common Mistakes

Using the length factor. Square units need the factor squared: 1 m² is 10.7639 ft², not 3.28.

Multiplying mixed units. Convert length and width to the same unit before multiplying.

Confusing acres and hectares. A hectare is about two and a half acres.

Forgetting waste allowance. Buy 5 to 10 percent extra flooring or tiles.

Treating square feet and feet squared differently. They mean the same thing.