How to Measure Your Height at Home

A careful home measurement can get within a few millimeters of the height a doctor’s office records. You need a flat wall, a hardcover book (or a box with square corners), a pencil and a tape measure. The whole thing takes about two minutes.

Step by step

1. Pick the right spot. Use a hard floor, not carpet, and a flat section of wall with no baseboard heater or thick trim at the bottom.
2. Take off your shoes, and anything on top of your head: hats, hair clips, buns.
3. Stand straight against the wall. Feet together, with your heels, backside, shoulders and the back of your head touching the wall.
4. Look straight ahead. Keep your chin level, as if the line of sight from your ear to your eye were parallel to the floor. Tilting your head up or down changes the reading.
5. Place the book flat on your head with its spine against the wall, and press it down gently until it touches your crown.
6. Mark the wall with a pencil along the bottom edge of the book, then step away.
7. Measure from the floor to the mark with a tape measure held straight up the wall. Read to the nearest ⅛ inch or millimeter.

Doing it twice and averaging the two results smooths out small errors. If you have a helper, ask them to hold the book level and read the mark at eye level. Reading a mark from below or above makes it look higher or lower than it is.

Measuring by yourself

With no one to help, hold the book against the wall with one hand, duck out from under it carefully, and make the mark. A small spirit level on the book, or a level app on your phone, confirms the book isn’t tilted. A tilted book is the most common source of error.

Converting your height

US heights are given in feet and inches. Most other countries use centimeters.

• Feet and inches to cm: multiply the feet by 12, add the inches, and multiply by 2.54. For example, 5 ft 6 in = 66 in × 2.54 = 167.64 cm.
• cm to feet and inches: divide by 2.54 to get inches, then divide by 12. The whole number is feet, and the remainder is inches. For example, 180 cm ÷ 2.54 = 70.87 in = 5 ft 10.9 in.

Our feet to cm and cm to feet converters do this instantly. They also show where your height falls among US adults.

How tall is average?

According to CDC measurements of US adults aged 20 and over (NHANES 2015–2018), the average height is:

	Average height	In feet and inches
Men	175.3 cm	about 5 ft 9 in
Women	161.3 cm	about 5 ft 3½ in

Half of US men are between about 5 ft 7 in and 5 ft 11 in, and half of women are between about 5 ft 1½ in and 5 ft 5½ in.

Measuring children

Use the same method, but make sure the child stands with heels together and doesn’t rise onto their toes when the book comes down. Measuring at the same time of day every few months gives the most reliable growth record. For children under two, pediatricians measure length lying down, which reads slightly more than standing height. So a toddler’s first standing height can look like they “shrank.”

Why your height seems to change

• Time of day: most people are roughly 1 cm taller in the morning than at night.
• Posture: slouching can take off 1–2 cm. Standing fully straight is the only repeatable position.
• Shoes and hair: a doctor’s measurement is barefoot, with the measuring bar pressed down through the hair.
• Age: adults gradually lose height from their 40s onward, as the discs between the vertebrae thin.