Area Converter

An area converter turns square metres into square feet, acres, hectares and back — 1 square metre is 10.7639 square feet, 1 hectare is exactly 10,000 square metres, and 1 acre is 4,046.86 square metres. Area conversion catches people out because the factors are squared: there are 3.28084 feet in a metre, but 10.7639 square feet in a square metre, because the conversion applies in both directions at once. Using the length factor by mistake understates a floor by a factor of three. This page is for flooring, land, paint and property listings, and it runs entirely in your browser.

How to use it

1. Pick the unit you have and the unit you want.
2. Type the amount — the answer appears as you type.
3. Everything converts through square metres, so square feet to acres is handled in one step rather than two roundings.
4. For a room, multiply length by width first, then convert the result — do not convert the sides and then multiply.

Examples

• 1 square metre = 10.7639 square feet.
• 1 hectare = 10,000 square metres = 2.47105 acres.
• 1 acre = 4,046.86 square metres = 43,560 square feet.
• 640 acres = 1 square mile.

Frequently asked questions

How many square feet are in a square metre?

10.7639 square feet. The number surprises people who expect something near 3.28, which is the number of feet in a metre — but area is two-dimensional, so the factor is squared: 3.28084 x 3.28084 = 10.7639. This is the single most common area mistake, and it is a large one. A 20 square metre room is about 215 square feet, not 66. If a property listing gives a figure that looks implausibly small when converted, someone has probably used the length factor.

How big is an acre?

4,046.86 square metres, or 43,560 square feet — roughly 0.4 of a hectare, and near enough to a square 64 metres on each side. The traditional description is the area a yoke of oxen could plough in a day, which is why it was historically a long thin strip rather than a square: one furlong long by one chain wide. For a mental picture, an acre is about three-quarters of a football pitch, and a square mile is exactly 640 acres.

What is the difference between an acre and a hectare?

A hectare is metric and an acre is not, and a hectare is about two and a half times larger. A hectare is exactly 10,000 square metres — a square 100 metres on a side — which makes it easy to reason about. An acre is 4,046.86 square metres, giving 2.47105 acres to the hectare. Most of the world measures land in hectares; the United States, and to some extent Britain and India, still use acres. Both are on this page because property documents in the same country often mix them.

How do I convert a room measured in feet to square metres?

Multiply the two sides together first, then convert the single area figure once. A room 12 feet by 15 feet is 180 square feet, and 180 divided by 10.7639 is 16.7 square metres. Converting each side to metres and then multiplying gives the same answer, but it rounds twice instead of once and is easier to get wrong. For an L-shaped room, split it into rectangles, work out each area, add them, and convert the total.

Why is square footage not just the length times two?

Because multiplying by two gives you the perimeter, roughly, not the area. Area is length times width — the amount of surface inside the shape — while adding the sides gives the distance around the outside. It matters most when buying materials: paint and flooring are sold by area, skirting board and fencing by length. A long narrow room and a square room can have identical areas and very different perimeters, which is why the same floor area can need noticeably different amounts of edging.