173 cm = 5 ft 8.1 in

173 cm in feet and inches

Under the definition in force since July 1, 1959, the inch is exactly 25.4 mm, as NIST explains. Converting 173 cm:

1. 173 ÷ 2.54 = 68.110 inches
2. 68.110 ÷ 12 = 5.676, so 5 feet
3. 68.110 − 60 = 8.11 inches
4. 173 cm = 5′ 8.11″, or 5′8″ to the nearest inch

An exact 5′8″ is 68 inches, 172.72 cm, so 173 cm is 0.28 cm taller, about a ninth of an inch. Anything from about 171.5 cm to 173.9 cm rounds to 5′8″. In decimal feet, 173 cm is 5.68 ft.

The reverse conversion is on the 5′8″ to cm page.

A height shared by stars of both sexes

173 cm stands out in the site's celebrity data for one reason: it is shared by men and women in almost equal numbers. Four people with pages on the site are listed at exactly 173 cm, and five more are within a centimeter:

Most of these figures come from Wikidata, often citing press profiles, and a few from interviews or tweets the person posted; each person's page explains the source. Celebrity heights are rarely measured under controlled conditions, so treat a centimeter either way as normal noise.

The table illustrates a point the statistics below make precisely. For Dua Lipa, Rihanna and Maya Hawke, 173 to 174 cm is a tall height for a woman; for Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr. and Tobey Maguire, it is a slightly below-average height for a man in the United States or United Kingdom.

For women, 173 cm is taller than any national average

The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), which pooled 1,472 population studies with heights measured on more than 18.6 million people, reports that the tallest women born in 1996 are in Latvia, the Netherlands, Estonia and the Czech Republic, all averaging over 168 cm. The highest figure in the site's data is Latvia's 169.8 cm. A 173 cm woman is more than 3 cm taller than the average woman in the tallest country on Earth, and 14 cm taller than the world average for women born in 1996, about 159 cm according to Our World in Data.

In the United States, NHANES 2021–2023 measured heights in person. The published 95th percentile for women aged 20 and over is 172.5 cm, so 173 cm is taller than more than 95 percent of American women. Among women in their 20s, whose 95th percentile is 174.6 cm, it is around the 92nd percentile. On the CDC 2000 growth reference at age 20, it sits about 1.5 standard deviations above the female median of 163.3 cm, near the 93rd percentile.

173 cm and the runway

This is the height that the fashion industry uses as its floor. The British Association of Model Agents has said female runway models should be between 173 cm (5′8″) and 180 cm (5′11″). Women who are shorter, described as under about 168 cm, are usually classed as petite models and work mainly in commercial and print. For men, the preferred runway range is about 180 to 188 cm, so a 173 cm man is well below it.

For men, 173 cm is close to the average in Brazil and Iran

For men, the same height is ordinary in many countries. NCD-RisC estimates for men born in 1996:

Iran shows one of the largest gains anywhere. NCD-RisC highlights Iranian men's increase of 16.5 cm over the century; in the site's data, 157.1 cm became 173.6 cm. A 173 cm Iranian man born in 1896 would have been about 16 cm taller than average.

Senegal moved in the opposite direction recently. Senegalese men born in 1976 averaged 175.4 cm, more than 2 cm taller than those born in 1996, part of the reversal across several sub-Saharan African countries noted by both NCD-RisC and Our World in Data.

East Asia at 173 cm

173 cm also sits neatly inside the range of East Asian men's averages, which have changed faster than almost anywhere. In the site's NCD-RisC data for men born in 1996, Japan averages 170.8 cm, China 171.8 cm, North Korea 172.0 cm and South Korea 174.9 cm. A century earlier, men born in 1896 averaged 156.2 cm in Japan, 161.0 cm in China and 159.8 cm in South Korea, so a 173 cm man then would have been between 12 and 17 cm above average in each country. NCD-RisC reports that South Korean men gained 15.2 cm over the century, while Japan's increase stopped for people born after the early 1960s, which is why South Korean men now average about 4 cm more than Japanese men.

A note on North Korea

The site's NCD-RisC figure for North Korean men born in 1996 is 172.0 cm, against 174.9 cm for South Korean men, a gap of 2.9 cm. Wikipedia's human height article cites a much larger difference: it says South Koreans who grew up in the mid-1990s were about 12 cm taller than North Koreans, and that a study of North Korean children who defected found 18-year-old males were 12.7 cm shorter than their South Korean peers. These figures come from different methods and populations. NCD-RisC's figures are statistical estimates built from pooled population studies, while the defector studies measure one particular group of people who left the country. The honest conclusion is that North Korean heights are uncertain, and our figure should be read with that caveat.

173 cm in the United States

Values are interpolated from published percentiles; the 95th percentile for women 80 and over was not published.

For American men the average is 175.1 cm, so 173 cm is 2.1 cm (0.8 inch) below average,. Among men aged 70 to 79 it is right at the median, and among men 80 and over it is above average.

Characters at 173 cm

Three popular shonen protagonists, Yuji, Denji and Luffy, sit within a centimeter of one another, and all are listed at almost exactly the height of Tom Holland in our data.

Other places 173 cm appears

• Horse racing. Flat jockeys typically stand between about 147 and 170 cm, so 173 cm is taller than usual. It is not unheard of, though: the English jockey Lester Piggott was 5′8″ (173 cm). Jump jockeys are often taller still.
• Airline history. A 1966 Eastern Airlines advertisement capped stewardess height at 5′9″ (175.3 cm), so a 173 cm woman would have just fit. The range usually quoted today runs from about 152 cm to about 185 cm.

Teen growth and couples

On the CDC's 2000 stature-for-age charts, the median boy reaches 173 cm at about 15.9 years. Using the CDC's z-score method, 173 cm is about the 64th percentile for boys at 15, the 47th at 16 and the 33rd at 18. For girls it is about the 96th percentile at 15 and the 94th at 18. Wikipedia's summary of growth research puts the end of growth at about 15 to 16 for girls and 18 to 19 for boys.

In the 2013 PLOS ONE couple study by Stulp and colleagues, using 12,502 British parents, the average partner difference was 14.11 cm and the man was taller in 92.5 percent of couples. A 173 cm man plus that typical gap suggests a partner of about 159 cm. For a 173 cm woman the arithmetic runs the other way: she is taller than roughly 39 percent of American men aged 20 and over, and the same study found that couples in which the woman is as tall as or taller than the man occur less often than random pairing predicts, 7.5 percent of couples against an expected 10.2 percent. Adding the average 14 cm gap to her height points to a partner of about 187 cm. The 5′8″ vs 6′2″ comparison shows what 173 cm looks like next to a tall partner, and the 3D height comparison tool can stand 173 cm next to any celebrity or character above.

Measuring at 173 cm

At 173 cm, the label you use depends on a few millimeters: 173.9 cm still rounds to 5′8″, while 174 cm becomes 5′9″ on a whole-inch form. Daily variation can easily cover that range. A study summarized in Wikipedia's human height article found children were on average 1.54 cm shorter in the late afternoon than right after getting up. For a measurement you can compare with NHANES or a doctor's record:

1. Measure barefoot on a hard floor, ideally in the morning.
2. Stand with heels, buttocks and shoulders against a wall and look straight ahead.
3. Lower a hardcover book flat onto the crown, keep it square to the wall, and mark beneath it.
4. Measure the mark with a metal tape to the millimeter.

Convert the exact result with the height converter, and see how it ranks for any age and sex with the height percentile calculator.