How the conversion works
Area units convert with the squares of the length factors behind them. A foot is exactly 0.3048 m, so a square foot is 0.3048 × 0.3048 = 0.09290304 square metres. A yard is 0.9144 m, so a square yard is 0.83612736 square metres, and an acre is defined as 4,840 square yards, which makes it exactly 4,046.8564224 square metres. The hectare is the metric land unit: a square 100 m on each side, so exactly 10,000 square metres.
The tool converts your value into square metres first, then back out into every other unit, rounding only at the moment of display (to six significant figures). The classic mistake with area is squaring nothing: a metre is about 3.28 feet, but a square metre is about 10.76 square feet, not 3.28. If an answer looks roughly 3 times too small or too big, that squared factor is almost always why.
Worked examples
Quick reference
- 1 m² = 10.764 sq ft = 1.196 sq yd
- 1 sq yd = 9 sq ft = 0.8361 m²
- 1 acre = 43,560 sq ft = 4,046.86 m² = 0.4047 ha
- 1 ha = 10,000 m² = 2.471 acres
- 1 km² = 100 ha = 0.3861 sq mi
- 1 sq mi = 640 acres = 2.59 km²
For a feel of scale: a doubles tennis court is 78 by 36 feet, which is 2,808 sq ft, so an acre (43,560 sq ft) holds about 15 and a half of them. A full-size football pitch of 105 by 68 m is 7,140 m², so an acre is a little over half a pitch and a hectare is about 1.4 pitches. A square mile is a serious amount of land: 640 acres, or nearly 260 hectares.
Acres, hectares and house listings
British property runs on a mix of all these units at once. Estate agents describe homes in square feet (and increasingly square metres on floorplans), gardens and paddocks are marketed in acres, while HM Land Registry and farming subsidies work officially in hectares. Planning documents and OS maps are metric too, so anyone buying a house with land ends up converting between at least three units before they can compare two listings, which is exactly what this page is for.
When you do compare, watch what is being measured as well as the unit. Quoted floor areas can be gross or net internal area, and garden sizes on listings are often rounded to the nearest quarter acre. Treat small differences between two listings as noise, and large ones as a prompt to check the floorplan. A useful sanity check: an average UK three-bed house has a floor area somewhere around 90 m², call it 970 sq ft, so a listing claiming triple that should look obviously bigger in the photos.
If it is lengths rather than areas you are converting, our length converter handles the metric and imperial ladder with the same exact factors, and the volume converter does the same for litres, pints and gallons. Moving from measuring a house to buying one, the stamp duty calculator and mortgage calculator pick up where the floorplan leaves off.
Frequently asked questions
How many square feet are in a square metre?
About 10.764 sq ft. A square foot is exactly 0.09290304 square metres, so to go from square feet to square metres multiply by 0.0929, and to go the other way multiply by 10.764. A 1,000 sq ft house is about 92.9 square metres.
How big is an acre?
Exactly 4,840 square yards, which is 4,046.86 square metres or 43,560 square feet. That is about 15 and a half doubles tennis courts (a doubles court is 78 by 36 feet, so 2,808 sq ft), or a little over half a full-size football pitch. In hectares it is about 0.4047 ha.
What is the difference between a hectare and an acre?
A hectare is metric: the area of a square 100 m by 100 m, so exactly 10,000 square metres. An acre is the older imperial unit of 4,840 square yards. One hectare is about 2.47 acres, and one acre is about 0.4 hectares. UK land is officially registered in hectares but often still marketed in acres.
How do I convert a house size in sq ft to square metres?
Multiply by 0.0929. A 750 sq ft flat is about 69.7 square metres, and a 1,500 sq ft house is about 139.4 square metres. UK estate agents mix both units freely, so it is worth converting before comparing two listings.
Why is the square feet factor not the same as the feet factor?
Because area scales with the square of the length factor. A foot is 0.3048 metres, but a square foot is 0.3048 times 0.3048, which is 0.09290304 square metres. Forgetting to square the factor is the classic area conversion mistake, and it makes answers wrong by more than 3 times.