164 cm = 5 ft 4.6 in

The half-inch height: 164 cm in feet

The modern inch is exactly 25.4 mm, a definition NIST dates to July 1, 1959. Converting 164 cm:

1. 164 ÷ 2.54 = 64.567 inches
2. 64.567 ÷ 12 = 5.381, so 5 feet
3. 64.567 − 60 = 4.57 inches
4. 164 cm = 5′ 4.57″

That fractional part is what makes 164 cm awkward. The inch boundary for rounding is 64.5 inches, which is 163.83 cm. 164 cm is only 0.17 cm past it, so strictly it rounds up to 5′5″, but it is barely closer to 5′5″ (165.1 cm, 1.1 cm away) than to 5′4″ (162.56 cm, 1.44 cm away). Many people at this height describe themselves as "five-four and a half," which is the most accurate short label.

The rounding matters for anyone filling in a form that asks for whole inches, because 164 cm and 165 cm both become 5′5″ while 163 cm becomes 5′4″. See 5′5″ in cm and 5′4″ in cm for the neighboring whole-inch heights.

Why your 164 might be a 165 (or a 163)

At heights that sit near a rounding boundary, ordinary measurement variation decides the label. Wikipedia's summary of the research on daily height change cites a study in which children were on average 1.54 cm shorter between getting out of bed and late afternoon. A person who measures 164.8 cm in the morning might measure 163.5 cm after a long day on their feet, and would round to 5′5″ in the first case and 5′4″ in the second.

Self-reporting adds another layer. In the large British couple study by Stulp and colleagues, the authors note that people tend to slightly overstate their height. Combined with rounding, that means a self-reported 5′5″ can describe anyone from about 163 to 166 cm. For anything that needs consistency, such as tracking height across years, measure at the same time of day and keep the centimeter value.

The average woman in Western Europe

164 cm is very close to the typical woman across much of Western and Southern Europe. The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) pooled 1,472 population studies with heights measured on more than 18.6 million people to estimate adult heights by birth year. For women born in 1996:

Seven countries within a centimeter of each other is a striking cluster. Behind it are very different starting points. Greek women gained 14.3 cm across the century and Polish women 14.1 cm, while Austrian women, already relatively tall in 1896, gained 7.0 cm. NCD-RisC notes that in several English-speaking and Northern European countries height gains plateaued for two or three decades before Eastern European countries followed.

The tallest women in the world are taller again: NCD-RisC reports that women born in 1996 in Latvia, the Netherlands, Estonia and the Czech Republic average more than 168 cm, about 4 cm above 164 cm.

The average man in India and Vietnam

The same 164 cm is also an average male height for a very large population. NCD-RisC estimates men born in 1996 at:

India's figure stands out: a gain of only 2.9 cm in a hundred years. Our World in Data notes that South Asian men had the smallest absolute height gains of any region over the century. Vietnam's men, starting much shorter, gained more than three times as much and ended at almost the same height.

So 164 cm has an unusual double identity: it is roughly the average British or French woman and the average Indian or Vietnamese man. Our World in Data reports that men are taller than women in every country, by about 12 cm globally, and these two groups sit at opposite ends of that comparison.

Celebrities a centimeter either side of 164 cm

No one in the site's celebrity data is listed at exactly 164 cm, but seven people with their own pages are within about a centimeter and a half, on both sides of the rounding boundary:

The table shows the rounding problem in practice. Jennifer Lopez, listed 0.2 cm below 164 cm, rounds to 5′4″, while 164 cm itself rounds to 5′5″. Side by side the two would look identical. It also shows that this height is shared by women and men in roughly equal measure, matching the "average European woman, average Indian man" pattern described above.

164 cm against the world averages

Our World in Data, drawing on NCD-RisC, puts the global average for people born in 1996 at about 171 cm for men and 159 cm for women. 164 cm sits between those two figures, 5 cm above the average woman and 7 cm below the average man. OWID also reports that men are about 7 percent taller than women worldwide, a ratio that has stayed fairly stable over the century even as both sexes grew.

There is a longer historical frame, too. OWID notes that the height of adult men stayed around 170 cm for roughly two thousand years before rising sharply with modern improvements in nutrition and health, and that men and women worldwide gained about 8 to 9 cm in average height over the last century. On that long view, 164 cm is a height many populations' men have only recently grown beyond, and one many populations' women have only recently reached.

164 cm in the United States

The NHANES survey run by the National Center for Health Statistics measures participants in person. In the August 2021–August 2023 percentiles, published in June 2025, 164 cm ranks as follows:

Values are interpolated between the published percentiles and are approximate.

For women, 164 cm is a little above average at every age, and clearly above average after 70. The average adult woman is 161.2 cm, so 164 cm is 2.8 cm (1.1 inches) taller. For men, it is near the bottom of the range: the average adult man is 175.1 cm, 11.1 cm (4.4 inches) taller.

On the older CDC 2000 growth reference at age 20, 164 cm sits at about the 54th percentile for women, matching the NHANES figure for women in their 20s, and at about the 4th percentile for men.

Characters at 164 cm

Two of the most popular anime characters in the site's data share this exact height, and a third is half a centimeter taller:

Vegeta's rival Goku is listed at 175 cm in the same guidebook data, 11 cm taller, a gap almost identical to the 11.1 cm between 164 cm and the average US man. Demon Slayer's three main boys, meanwhile, are within a centimeter of one another.

Teen growth and 164 cm

The CDC's 2000 stature-for-age charts provide a median and two shape parameters for each month of age, from which any height can be turned into a percentile using the CDC's published formula. At 164 cm:

At 14, a 164 cm boy is at about the median; by 18 he would be near the 5th percentile, because boys typically keep growing until about 18 or 19, according to Wikipedia's summary of growth research. A 164 cm girl, whose growth typically ends around 15 or 16, stays slightly above average into adulthood.

Clothing, sports and couples at 164 cm

Clothing. Petite sizing is generally described as being for women 163 cm (5′4″) or shorter. At 164 cm a woman sits just outside the definition, which means petite and regular lengths may both fit depending on proportions. Petite cuts adjust sleeve length, waist placement and shoulder width, not just hem length.

Horse racing. Flat-racing jockeys typically stand between about 147 and 170 cm, so 164 cm is well inside their usual range; riding weight, around 49 to 54 kg on the flat, is the real constraint.

Couples. In the 2013 PLOS ONE study of 12,502 British couples, mothers averaged 163.75 cm, almost exactly 164 cm, and the average partner difference was 14.11 cm. A 164 cm woman with an average-height partner from that study would be standing next to someone about 178 cm tall, the statistically typical pairing. The 5′4″ vs 5′10″ comparison shows almost exactly that gap.

Use the height difference calculator to see any pairing to scale, or drop a 164 cm figure into the 3D comparison tool next to celebrities and characters.

Measuring when you are on the boundary

Because 164 cm sits 1.7 mm past the 5′4½″ rounding line, a careful measurement is the only way to know which label is honest. A simple routine gives repeatable results:

1. Measure in the morning, before a lot of walking or standing, and barefoot.
2. Stand on a hard floor with heels, buttocks and shoulders against a wall, looking straight ahead.
3. Rest a hardcover book flat on your head, square to the wall, and mark beneath it.
4. Measure with a metal tape and record the result in millimeters.
5. Repeat in the late afternoon to see your own daily range.

If both readings are above 163.8 cm, 5′5″ is a fair rounded label; if they straddle it, "5′4½″" or simply "164 cm" is the more accurate answer. The height converter shows the exact feet and inches for any reading.