You can measure your own height accurately without anyone else’s help. Stand barefoot against a flat wall, rest a rigid flat object level on top of your head, mark the wall at its underside, then measure from the floor to that mark with a tape measure. The technique is simple, but a few common mistakes — shoes, a tilted chin, a soft marker, the wrong time of day — can each throw the result off by a centimetre or more.
What you need
Three things, all likely already in your home: a flat, uncarpeted wall with clear floor-to-ceiling space in front of it; a rigid flat object, such as a hardback book, a large set square, or a clipboard, to rest on your head; and a tape measure or ruler long enough to reach from the floor to roughly head height, or a pencil to mark the wall for a later measurement.
The method, step by step
Remove your shoes and any bulky hair accessory, and stand with your back to the wall. Position your heels, buttocks and shoulder blades against it if you comfortably can — not everyone’s natural posture touches all three points, and that’s fine, so long as you’re standing fully upright rather than leaning.
Look straight ahead, not up or down. The technical reference point professional examiners use is the Frankfurt plane: an imaginary horizontal line running from the bottom of your eye socket to the top of your ear canal, held level. In practice, this simply means keeping your chin level rather than tilted, which is the single easiest thing to get wrong.
Rest the rigid flat object flat on top of your head, pressed gently down, and keep it level and horizontal against the wall. Without moving your head or the object, mark the wall at the object’s underside with a pencil, or hold the object steady while you slide a tape measure into place to read the height directly.
Step away and measure from the floor to your mark, keeping the tape measure vertical and taut rather than slack or at an angle. Read the result to the nearest millimetre or tenth of a centimetre if your tape allows it.
Doing this alone, without a second pair of hands
The step most people assume needs help — marking the wall while the flat object stays level — is manageable solo with a little care. Press the flat object against the wall and your head first, check in a nearby mirror that it looks level, then keep steady pressure on it with one hand while marking underneath it with the other.
A large hardback book or a clipboard works better than a smaller object here, since it gives you more surface to hold steady one-handed while you mark or measure. A spirit level, if you have one, can double-check that the object is genuinely horizontal before you commit to a mark.
If you’d rather skip marking the wall entirely, some people find it easier to have the tape measure already taped vertically to the wall in advance, then simply read off the number where the flat object’s underside lines up, rather than marking and re-measuring in two separate steps.
Common mistakes and how much they cost you
| Mistake | Typical effect |
|---|---|
| Measuring with shoes or socks with thick soles on | Adds roughly 1-2.5cm, depending on footwear |
| Chin tilted up or down rather than level | Can shift the reading by around 1cm or more |
| Using a soft or flexible object instead of a rigid flat one | Introduces an inconsistent, hard-to-repeat error |
| Slouching or not standing fully upright | Understates height, sometimes by 1-2cm |
| Measuring at an inconsistent time of day | Adds natural variation of up to roughly 1.9cm — see below |
| Tape measure slack or held at an angle, not vertical | Small but avoidable extra error |
None of these mistakes are large individually, but several stacked together can easily shift a self-measured height by 2-3cm from a more careful reading — enough to matter if you’re checking a percentile or comparing against a reference table.
Why timing matters
Height genuinely changes by a small amount across the day. Your spinal discs compress gradually under gravity and the load of sitting or standing, then decompress overnight while you’re lying down, so you measure a little taller first thing in the morning than you do in the evening. This site’s own article on why you’re shorter in the evening covers the exact figures behind this, based on a published circadian-variation study.
For the most consistent result — comparing your height over time, or against a reference chart — measure at roughly the same time of day each time, ideally in the morning before the day’s compression has built up.
How this compares to a professional measurement
Trained examiners, such as those running the US NHANES health survey, use a fixed device called a stadiometer: a vertical ruler with a horizontal headboard that slides down to touch the top of the head, following the same core principles described above — barefoot, heels together, looking straight ahead along the Frankfurt plane, standing fully erect. The CDC’s own anthropometry procedures manual, cited below, documents this technique in detail for professional use.
The home method in this article follows the same underlying principles with household objects standing in for a stadiometer’s headboard and scale. It won’t match a clinical measurement to the millimetre every time, but done carefully, barefoot, with a level object and a vertical tape, it gets close.
Converting your result
Once you have a measurement in centimetres or feet and inches, use the calculator below to convert it, or see nearby heights for comparison.
- Centimetres
- 170 cm
- Metres
- 1.70 m
- Feet and inches
- 5'7"
- Total inches
- 66.9 in
Nearby heights
| cm | ft/in |
|---|---|
| 160 cm | 5'3" |
| 162 cm | 5'4" |
| 164 cm | 5'4.5" |
| 166 cm | 5'5.5" |
| 168 cm | 5'6" |
| 170 cm | 5'7" |
| 172 cm | 5'7.5" |
| 174 cm | 5'8.5" |
| 176 cm | 5'9.5" |
| 178 cm | 5'10" |
| 180 cm | 5'11" |
Method and sources
The core technique described here — barefoot measurement, heels together, a level flat object, looking straight ahead along the Frankfurt plane, a vertical tape measure — follows the same principles documented in the CDC/NCHS NHANES Anthropometry Procedures Manual, a professional protocol for trained examiners, adapted here for measuring alone at home with household objects rather than a stadiometer. The diurnal variation figures referenced above come from this site’s own why you’re shorter in the evening article, itself sourced to a published circadian-stature study.
This is general practical guidance, not a clinical measurement protocol. If you need a precisely accurate height for a medical reason, a GP surgery or clinic will have a calibrated stadiometer.
Try the height converter with your result, open the comparison board to see your height next to anyone or anything else, or read why you’re shorter in the evening to see how timing affects your measurement.