Area Converter
Convert square feet, square meters, acres, hectares, and more.
Conversion sheet
DIY at your own risk. Calcora's calculators and guides are general estimates and information only — not professional, engineering, legal, or safety advice. Always verify local building codes and permit requirements, and hire a licensed pro for electrical, gas, plumbing, structural, or any work you're not fully comfortable doing yourself.
Floor plans in square feet, land in acres or hectares, and metric blueprints in square meters all describe the same thing in incompatible units. This converter holds them against square meters so any area conversion is one step.
How it works
Every area converts through square meters as the base unit.
Area factors are not the same as length factors — they're squared. A foot is 0.3048 m, but a square foot is 0.3048², which is 0.092903 square meters. Forgetting to square is the single most common area-conversion error.
For land, the two big units are the acre (4046.86 m², the traditional US/UK measure) and the hectare (exactly 10,000 m², the metric standard). One hectare is about 2.47 acres.
Result = (value × square-meters-per-source-unit) ÷ square-meters-per-target-unit.
Worked examples
Convert a 1000 sq ft apartment to square meters. → 92.90 square meters
1000 × 0.092903 = 92.903 m².
Convert 5 acres to hectares. → 2.02 hectares
5 × 4046.8564 = 20234.28 m², divided by 10000 = 2.0234 ha.
Tips & gotchas
- To convert a length factor into an area factor, square it. Doubling a room's dimensions quadruples its area, not doubles it.
- An acre is roughly 0.4 hectare, and a hectare is about 2.5 acres — quick estimates for land listings.
- For paint or flooring, convert to the unit your supplier sells in (often square feet in the US, square meters elsewhere) before estimating quantity.
- A US acre is the same as a UK acre, so land area is one place where the two systems agree exactly.
FAQ
Why isn't 1 square foot just 0.3048 square meters?
Because area is two-dimensional. You square the length factor: 0.3048² = 0.092903 square meters per square foot.
How big is an acre in everyday terms?
About 43,560 square feet, or roughly the size of a US football field without the end zones. In metric it's about 0.405 hectare.
How many square feet are in a hectare?
About 107,639. A hectare is 10,000 square meters, and each square meter is about 10.764 square feet.
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