How the Area Converter Works
Area tells you how much flat surface something covers, such as a room, a garden or a plot of land. Most countries measure it in square meters and hectares. The United States and the United Kingdom also use square feet, square yards and acres. The Area Converter changes an area from one unit into another, so you can read a property listing from another country, buy the right amount of flooring or compare plots of land.
What you enter
- The value: a number, which can have decimals.
- The unit you have (From): square centimeters, square meters, square kilometers, square feet, square yards, acres or hectares.
- The unit you want (To): any of the same units.
How the conversion works
Every unit has a fixed size in square meters. The converter turns your area into square meters, and then turns the square meters into the unit you chose:
square meters = value x square meters in the From unit result = square meters / square meters in the To unit
These are the sizes of the units:
| Unit | Size in m² |
|---|---|
| 1 square centimeter (cm²) | 0.0001 |
| 1 square meter (m²) | 1 |
| 1 square foot (ft²) | 0.092903 |
| 1 square yard (yd²) | 0.836127 |
| 1 acre | 4,046.86 |
| 1 hectare (ha) | 10,000 |
| 1 square kilometer (km²) | 1,000,000 |
The converter uses these sizes rounded to six digits, so the answers are accurate for everyday work. A hectare is 100 meters by 100 meters. An acre is exactly 43,560 square feet, and a square yard is exactly 9 square feet.
A worked example
A flat has an area of 100 square meters, and you want to know the size in square feet.
| Step | Value |
|---|---|
| m² to ft² (100 / 0.092903) | 1,076.39 ft² |
The same 100 square meters in other units:
| Unit | Amount |
|---|---|
| Square centimeters | 1,000,000 cm² |
| Square feet | 1,076.39 ft² |
| Square yards | 119.60 yd² |
| Acres | 0.024711 ac |
| Hectares | 0.01 ha |
| Square kilometers | 0.0001 km² |
Square feet to square meters
| Square feet | Square meters |
|---|---|
| 100 | 9.29 |
| 500 | 46.45 |
| 1,000 | 92.90 |
| 1,500 | 139.35 |
| 2,000 | 185.81 |
Acres to hectares
| Acres | Hectares |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.4047 |
| 5 | 2.0234 |
| 10 | 4.0469 |
| 100 | 40.469 |
Chart: an acre and a hectare
A hectare is about two and a half acres (2.47). In square meters:
1 acre ████████████████ 4,047 m² 1 hectare ████████████████████████████████████████ 10,000 m²
Chart: three small units in square feet
A square yard is 3 feet by 3 feet, so it holds 9 square feet. A square meter is a little bigger than that:
1 square foot ████ 1 ft² 1 square yard █████████████████████████████████ 9 ft² 1 square meter ████████████████████████████████████████ 10.76 ft²
Doing it by hand
- Square meters to square feet: multiply by 10.764. So 50 m² is 538.2 ft².
- Square feet to square meters: multiply by 0.0929. So 250 ft² is 23.2 m².
- Square yards to square meters: multiply by 0.8361. So 100 yd² is 83.6 m².
- Acres to hectares: multiply by 0.4047. So 20 acres is 8.09 hectares.
- Hectares to acres: multiply by 2.471. So 3 hectares is 7.41 acres.
- Square kilometers to hectares: multiply by 100. So 2 km² is 200 hectares.
A quick estimate: to change square meters into square feet, multiply by 10 and add 8%. For 50 m², 50 x 10 is 500, and 8% more is 540. The exact answer is 538 ft².
Real-life sizes
- A room of 4 m by 5 m is 20 m², or 215.3 ft².
- A house of 1,500 ft² is 139.35 m².
- A football pitch of 105 m by 68 m is 7,140 m². That is 0.714 hectares, or 1.76 acres.
- An acre is 43,560 ft².
Where these conversions are used
- Homes and property: listings show the floor area in m² or ft², depending on the country.
- Flooring, tiles and paint: to know how much material to buy for a surface.
- Land and farming: plots are sold in acres or hectares.
- Gardens: lawn seed and fertiliser are given per square meter or per square foot.
- School and science: unit exercises, maps and scale drawings.
Tips
- An area unit is a length unit squared. A meter is 100 centimeters, but a square meter is 100 x 100 = 10,000 square centimeters. A meter is 3.28 feet, but a square meter is 3.28 x 3.28 = 10.76 square feet.
- Do not multiply an area by the length conversion. To change 10 m² into feet, you use 10.764, and not 3.281.
- Use the same unit for all the lengths before you multiply length by width.
- Small values need more digits. A square centimeter is a very small number of hectares, so the result may need many decimal places.
What this converter does not include
- Square miles, square inches, ares and local units, such as the Japanese tsubo.
- The area of a shape. Use a geometry calculator or a square footage calculator to work out an area from the lengths.
- Length and volume. Use a length or a volume converter for those.
This tool gives an estimate for general information only. For building, land sales or legal documents that need an exact area, use a surveyed measurement and follow the official rules.