One page, four tables, every metric-to-imperial conversion an ordinary week can produce. This is the full metric conversion chart — length, mass, volume and temperature — computed from the exact international definitions, so it agrees with the Metric Conversion Calculator to the last digit. Print it, pin it up, or read the two short sections after the tables on how the chart runs in both directions and why its numbers can be trusted.

The metric conversion table: length

Length is where the metric to imperial conversion is asked for most — patterns, screens, timber, heights. Metric on the left, imperial across the top:

The single busiest row-pair in this table is the meter row read against the inches column: metric conversion to inches is the lookup behind sewing patterns, monitor sizes quoted in centimeters abroad, and European furniture dimensions. One meter is 39.370079 inches; one centimeter is 0.393701 inches; and the whole chart is generated by one defined number, 25.4 millimeters to the inch. Stated the other way round, the metric to inches conversion is a multiplication by 1 ÷ 25.4 per millimeter — and every metric to inch conversion, whatever the starting unit, runs through that same 25.4.

Worked readings: the chart in use

Four readings, one per table habit. A rider’s height of 180 cm: read the centimeter row against inches and scale it — 180 cm is 70.866142 inches, which is 5 feet 10.87 inches, the figure a US form wants. A 500 g bag of flour: the gram row against ounces gives 500 × 0.035274 = 17.637 oz, just over a pound (1.102311 lb, from the pounds column) — which is why European recipes feel generous next to US one-pound bags. A 2-liter bottle: 2 × 1.056688 = 2.113376 US quarts, or 0.528344 gallons — half a gallon, near enough, and the chart shows exactly how near. A 65 kg passenger: 65 kg is 10.235748 stones, or 143.30047 lb — the two figures two different airlines’ forms will ask for. None of these needed a calculator; each is one chart figure and one multiplication, and each can be checked in the tool in seconds.

Five values from the tables are worth memorizing outright, because they recur weekly: 1 inch = 25.4 mm, 1 meter = 3.28084 feet, 1 kilogram = 2.204623 pounds, 1 liter = 1.056688 US quarts, and 1 US gallon = 3.785412 liters. With those five, most of the metric unit conversions in daily life become one-step estimates — and the tables above remain the court of appeal when an estimate is not good enough.

Two more readings, from the tables people forget are here. Temperature: a child’s fever of 38.5 °C is 101.3 °F by the formula row — the reading that decides whether a metric thermometer’s owner reaches for medicine or for a phone. Volume: a 750 mL wine bottle is 25.360517 fluid ounces, which is why a “standard bottle” pours five 5-ounce glasses in the US and five 150 mL glasses in Europe and both hosts call it five glasses. The chart habit — look for the row, not the app — is what these four tables are training.

Mass: kilograms against ounces, pounds and stones

Mass is the chart of kitchens and luggage. A kilogram is 2.204623 pounds and 35.273962 ounces; the stone column (a stone is exactly 14 pounds) serves British body-weight figures, which remain stubbornly un-metric. Every figure here is a metric unit conversion in the strict sense — a restatement of the same mass in another defined unit, not a fresh measurement. Watch the tonne row in particular: a metric tonne is 2,204.622622 pounds, which is not the US short ton of 2,000 pounds (907.18474 kg) — a 10% gap hiding behind two near-identical words, and the costliest single confusion in this whole chart’s territory.

Volume: liters against the US ladder

US measures throughout, because this chart serves US readers: the imperial gallon of 4.54609 liters is a different unit, and mixing the two systems inside one metric conversion table is how conversion charts earn bad reputations. When a source is British, convert from the liter column, which is identical in both worlds.

Temperature: the chart that is really a formula

Temperature refuses the factor treatment — its scales start at different zeros — so this table prints the anchor points instead of a ratio: °F = °C × 9 ÷ 5 + 32 generates every row, and the anchors (freezing, body, boiling, ovens) are the ones daily life asks about. It is the one table here that a metric to imperial calculator still beats for arbitrary values; for the twelve that matter, the chart is faster.

Reading the chart in both directions

A metric-to-imperial chart converts imperial amounts too, if you change the operation: forward is multiplication, backward is division. Six feet into meters — divide by the meter row’s feet figure: 6 ÷ 3.28084 = 1.8288 m. Ten pounds into kilograms — 10 ÷ 2.204623 = 4.535924 kg. Read left-to-right with the factor and this is a metric to imperial conversion chart; read it with division and it is an imperial to metric conversion chart — the same ink, both jobs. That symmetry is why one printed page can serve a workshop that buys in both systems. The reverse journey has its own name in older books — english to metric conversion, from when imperial units were called English units — and in modern US usage the same trip is the standard to metric conversion, “standard” being the workshop’s word for US customary. Whichever name your source uses, the operation is identical: find the chart figure, divide.

Inside the metric system itself there is nothing to chart at all. Converting metric units — kilometers to meters, grams to kilograms — is a decimal shift, because the prefixes are powers of ten: 2.5 kg is 2,500 g, and 750 mL is 0.75 L, by moving a point. Charts exist only where the two systems cross, because only there does a genuine factor live. That is also the answer to give anyone hunting for all metric conversions on one page: the metric-internal ones are a ladder (milli, centi, deci, base, deca, hecto, kilo), and the cross-system ones are these four tables. Together they are complete.

Why these numbers can be trusted

People sometimes call the figures in a chart like this metric conversion rates, but they are not rates — nothing here fluctuates. Since 1959 the inch has been defined as exactly 25.4 millimeters and the pound as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms, and the factors in NIST SP 811, the US standards guide, are those definitions written out. A metric measurements chart built on them — this one, or the metric to standard conversion chart a school might print — cannot go stale, because definitions do not drift. What can drift is a shortcut: 2.2 pounds to the kilo runs 0.21% low, 1.6 kilometers to the mile runs 0.58% low, and a liter called “a quart” is short by 5.67%. Use shortcuts to estimate; use the chart — or the metric converter in the tool above — to settle.

One category the hub tool converts that this chart treats in a single line, because its table would be a page of its own: area. An acre is exactly 4,046.8564224 square meters, a hectare is exactly 10,000 square meters (2.471054 acres), and a square meter is 10.76391 square feet. Land and rooms are the two places it bites; the conversion metric to inches instinct — find the defined factor, multiply once — is the same here, with the factors squared.

A last practical note on metric system conversions that no table can hold: compound measures. Speeds, densities and doses per kilo of body weight chain two conversions at once (miles per hour to kilometers per hour is the friendly exception — the hours cancel, and the factor is the mile factor itself, 1.609344). For those, and for any value not printed here, the metric to inches calculator family on the hub page — one tool, five categories, thirty units — applies the same factors at full precision. There is no single conversion metric that covers the whole system, because the system crosses itself in a dozen places; the conversion metrics are the defined factors, and this page is the reference that collects them — a conversion table metric and imperial readers can share, in both directions. To convert metric to standard, read forward and multiply; to come back, divide. Keep metric conversion tables like this one where the work is — metric conversion charts on the wall, and the calculator for everything the wall cannot hold. A metric conversions chart is only as good as its factors; these are the definitions themselves.