175 cm = 5 ft 8.9 in

175 cm in feet and inches

175 centimeters converts to 5 feet 8.9 inches, or 68.9 inches in total. Because the inch has been fixed at exactly 25.4 millimeters since July 1, 1959, according to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, the arithmetic is exact rather than approximate: 175 ÷ 2.54 = 68.898 inches. Take away 60 inches for five feet and 8.898 inches remain.

Rounded to the nearest whole inch, that is 5′9″. The rounding is close but clear-cut. A true 5′9″ is 175.26 cm, only 0.26 cm above 175, so anyone who measures 175 cm and states 5′9″ is overstating by about a tenth of an inch. Going the other way, 5′8″ (172.72 cm) is more than 2 cm away, which is why almost nobody converts 175 cm downward.

A useful mental shortcut: 5′6″ is 167.64 cm, and every inch above it adds 2.54 cm. Three inches more brings you to 175.26 cm, so 175 cm lands almost on top of 5′9″. If you need other heights near this one, the height converter handles any value in either direction.

The closest thing to an "average man" in the United States

What makes 175 cm interesting is how precisely it matches the current American male average. The National Center for Health Statistics measured 2,690 men aged 20 and older in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between August 2021 and August 2023. Their weighted mean height was 175.1 cm and their median was 175.2 cm. In inches the report gives a mean of 68.9, the same figure you get by converting 175 cm.

So a man who stands 175 cm tall is, statistically speaking, right in the middle. Interpolating between the published percentiles puts him at roughly the 49th percentile: about half of US adult men are taller and half are shorter. You can check any other height against the same distribution with the height percentile calculator.

These figures come from measured, not self-reported, heights. NHANES technicians use a wall-mounted stadiometer, and participants stand without shoes. That matters, because self-reported surveys tend to drift upward, and a "5′9″ average" quoted from a questionnaire is not the same thing as 175 cm measured in a clinic.

How 175 cm compares by age group

The same table breaks the results down by decade of age, and the percentile for 175 cm shifts noticeably across generations:

Among men in their twenties, 175 cm is slightly below the middle. Among men in their eighties, it is clearly above average. Two separate effects produce that pattern. Younger cohorts grew up taller, and older men have also lost some height since they were young. The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, which measured the same 2,084 people repeatedly over years, found that height loss starts at about age 30 and that men lose about 3 cm on average between 30 and 70, and about 5 cm by age 80. A man measured at 175 cm at 70 may well have stood around 178 cm at 30.

What 175 cm means for women

For women the picture is completely different. The NHANES mean for women aged 20 and over is 161.2 cm, and the 95th percentile is 172.5 cm. A woman who is 175 cm tall is above that 95th percentile, so fewer than 1 in 20 American women reach her height. Even among women aged 20 to 29, the tallest generation in the survey, the 95th percentile is 174.6 cm, still a fraction short of 175.

In practical terms, 175 cm is about 14 cm (5.5 inches) above the average American woman and roughly the height of the average American man. Couples in which the woman is 175 cm and the man is average height will therefore often stand eye to eye in flat shoes.

175 cm around the world

The global picture puts 175 cm comfortably above the worldwide mean for men. Our World in Data, drawing on the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), gives the global average for men born in 1996 as about 171 cm and for women about 159 cm. NCD-RisC pooled 1,472 population-based studies with measured height from more than 18.6 million people, and it reports the average height people reached as adults, organized by birth year.

Several countries' male averages for the 1996 birth cohort fall within about half a centimeter of 175 cm:

South Korea is a striking case. NCD-RisC found that South Korean men gained 15.2 cm over the century of birth cohorts it studied, rising from 159.8 cm for men born in 1896 to 174.9 cm for those born in 1996. A height that would have been exceptional in Seoul a hundred years ago is now simply typical.

Why the US figure in this table is higher than 175.1 cm

You may notice that the table above lists American men at 177.1 cm, while NHANES says 175.1 cm. Both are correct, because they answer different questions. NCD-RisC estimates the adult height of one birth cohort, people born in 1996, at around age 18. NHANES describes everyone aged 20 and over who was alive and measured in 2021–2023. That group includes men born in the 1930s and 1940s, who were shorter to begin with and have since lost height with age. If you restrict NHANES to men in their twenties, the median rises to 176.1 cm, much closer to the cohort estimate.

How American heights reached this point

A historical series from the same survey program shows how slowly the American average has moved. The National Health Examination Survey of 1960–62 measured men aged 20 to 74 at an average of 173.4 cm. By 1999–2002 the same age band averaged 176.2 cm, an increase of under 3 cm across four decades. The NCHS authors noted that height rose far less dramatically than weight over the same period.

NCD-RisC places this in an international frame. The United States was one of the tallest nations for people born a century ago but had the smallest gain in height of any high-income country, so it has since been overtaken by much of continental Europe. In 1896 an American man of 175 cm would have been above his country's average of 171.1 cm. Today he matches the national figure almost exactly.

Growing up to 175 cm

For parents watching a teenager grow, 175 cm is also a milestone on the growth charts. On the CDC 2000 stature-for-age reference, the median boy passes 175 cm at around 16 to 17 years of age and reaches about 176.8 cm by age 20. Girls on the same chart level off at a median of about 163.3 cm, so 175 cm is well above the middle for an adult woman.

Growth charts describe a reference population. They do not predict an individual child's final height, and a child who is tracking well above or below the median is not necessarily growing abnormally. If you are concerned about a child's growth, talk to a pediatrician, who can plot measurements over time. For a rough projection based on parents' heights, child height predictors use published methods that come with wide margins of error.

Famous people listed at 175 cm

A long list of well-known people are listed at or very near 175 cm, which is unsurprising for a height so close to the middle of the male distribution. Among women, it is a notably tall figure.

• Coco Gauff: the WTA's player profile lists her at 5′9″ (1.75 m), and her height page shows her next to other players.
• Justin Bieber: Billboard's artist page gives his height as 5′9″. The site lists him at 175.3 cm, which is 5′9″ exactly; see Justin Bieber's height.
• Jennifer Lawrence: listed at 175 cm in the site's database; alongside co-stars on her own page.
• Neymar: also listed at 175 cm in the site's database, which puts him at about the median for American men.

Among fictional characters, Goku from Dragon Ball and Megumi Fushiguro from Jujutsu Kaisen are both given as 175 cm in official character data. Goku's page, Goku's height, puts that figure next to the rest of the Dragon Ball cast.

Listed heights for public figures come from rosters, official bios and interviews, and they are not always measured barefoot. Treat them as good approximations rather than clinical measurements.

Measuring yourself at 175 cm accurately

If you are trying to decide whether you are really 175 cm or closer to 174 or 176, measurement technique matters more than most people think. A few points worth knowing:

• Measure without shoes, with heels, buttocks, shoulder blades and the back of your head against a flat wall, as NHANES technicians are trained to do.
• Keep your gaze level. Tilting the chin up or down changes the reading by several millimeters.
• Measure at a consistent time of day. The spine compresses during the day, so you are tallest just after getting up. A 2011 study that measured volunteers 24 times over a day recorded a trough-to-peak change of about 17.6 mm in healthy adults, with the biggest drop in the first hour after rising.
• Use a hard, flat object such as a book held flat against the wall to mark the top of the head, rather than a tape measure held loosely above the hair.

The good news for anyone near 175 cm is that the rounding window is wide. Any reading from 174.0 cm (68.5 inches) up to 176.5 cm (69.5 inches) rounds to 5′9″, so a few millimeters of measurement error will not change the imperial figure you quote.

Comparing 175 cm with other heights

Because 175 cm is such a common reference point, it is often the height people use when they want to see how much taller or shorter a friend, partner or celebrity is. A 165 cm woman standing next to a 175 cm man is 10 cm (about 4 inches) shorter, close to the average gap between American men and women of the same age. The height difference calculator shows that kind of comparison to scale, including where the shorter person's eye line falls.

The next height up with its own page is 176 cm, which happens to match the median for American men in their twenties almost exactly.