📏 Length & height
178 cm in Feet
178 centimetres is 5 feet 10.1 inches, or 5.840 feet. That uses the international foot of exactly 0.3048 m, so the figure is exact to the precision shown.
The short answer
178 cm = 5 ft 10.1 in
Also written as 5.840 ft, or 70.08 inches.
About 178 cm in feet
178 cm is 5.840 ft because one foot is 30.48 cm: 178 ÷ 30.48 = 5.840. Going through inches gives the same answer and is easier to read: 178 ÷ 2.54 = 70.08 inches, which is 5 whole feet (60 inches) plus 10.08 inches.
Height is the one place where feet and inches are still used in everyday British and American writing, which is why a figure like 178 cm gets written both ways. 178 cm is taller than the 175 cm median adult man in most European and North American surveys, so it reads naturally as 5′10.1″ on a form that asks for feet and inches.
For a passport, a medical record or a clothing size, quote 178 cm or 5 ft 10.1 in and not both: mixing the two invites a rounding argument. Two decimal places on 5.840 ft already represent about 3 mm, which is finer than any height measurement taken with a wall scale.
Written as a decimal, 178 cm is 1.78 m; in feet it is 5.840 ft, and in inches 70.08. Metric drawings use metres, British property listings use feet, and medical charts use centimetres, so all three turn up for the same 178 cm measurement.
178 cm in feet is the usual way to type this, and the answer is 5.840 ft, or 5 ft 10.1 in to the nearest tenth of an inch. Every one of those forms describes the same length, so pick the one the form in front of you asks for.
How the calculation works
- 178 cm ÷ 30.48 = 5.840 ft
- 178 cm × 0.0328084 = 5.840 ft
- 178 cm ÷ 2.54 = 70.08 in, then ÷ 12 = 5 ft 10.1 in
Reference values
| Centimetres | Feet and inches | Decimal feet |
|---|---|---|
| 173 cm | 5 ft 8.1 in | 5.676 ft |
| 174 cm | 5 ft 8.5 in | 5.709 ft |
| 175 cm | 5 ft 8.9 in | 5.741 ft |
| 176 cm | 5 ft 9.3 in | 5.774 ft |
| 177 cm | 5 ft 9.7 in | 5.807 ft |
| 178 cm | 5 ft 10.1 in | 5.840 ft |
| 179 cm | 5 ft 10.5 in | 5.873 ft |
| 180 cm | 5 ft 10.9 in | 5.906 ft |
| 181 cm | 5 ft 11.3 in | 5.938 ft |
| 182 cm | 5 ft 11.7 in | 5.971 ft |
| 183 cm | 6 ft 0 in | 6.004 ft |