How Do You Calculate Inches Into Square Feet?

Unless you are a current or future scientist, a construction worker or a surveyor, you can probably go about your daily business without worrying too much about measuring the area of things. You might overhear that the pressure is such-and-such "per square inch," or that a certain kind of carpet costs a given amount "per square foot," but not stop to consider the matter — pardon the pun — at length.

It is handy, however, to be able to work with common length units (e.g., inches, feet, yards, centimeters and meters) and work between them while moving from the single dimension of length to two-dimensional area. To convert inches to square feet, first recognize that you have different units in play and assess exactly what you're hoping to do or learn with your conversion.

An inch was originally defined centuries ago in Europe as the width of an adult male's thumb, but this became the width of three pieces of barleycorn placed side by side. The foot's origins are what you would probably expect — the approximate length of a man's foot. The Romans first introduced the 12-inch foot to England in the first century CE.

Today, an inch is, ironically enough, defined precisely in terms of metric units, translating to 25.4 millimeters (mm). Correspondingly, a foot is now defined as 12 times 25.4 mm = 304.8 mm exactly.

Different two-dimensional shapes have different formulas for area, which is the size of a closed region of a plane (an idealized flat surface). The formula for the area of a rectangle is length times width, usually expressed as (l × w). The formulas for other regular shapes, such as circles and various kinds of triangles, are more complex, but just as reliable.

In the case of extending your measurement by one more dimension, you add depth, height or some third direction that is mutually perpendicular to the other two. The multiplication of these three parameters gives the volume of the three-dimensional enclosed space.

The formula for a rectangular box, for example, is length times width times height, or (l × w × h). Formulas for spheres, pyramids, cones and more have shepherded many a geometry student through quizzes and exams.

If you have a rectangular surface and know the width and the length in inches, you can find the area in square feet in a couple of different ways.

The first is to find the area in square inches and convert this directly to square feet. This is done by dividing by 144. The reason is because 1 ft = 12 in, (1 ft)² = (12 in)² = 144 in². A second way is to convert both the length and the width to feet by dividing each by 12, and then multiply these together to attain the same result.

Example: Given a table 48 in. long and 30 in. wide, what is its area in square feet?

Method 1:
(48)(30) = 1,440 in² 1,440 in²/(144 in²/ft²) = 10 ft²

Method 2:
(48 in/[12 in/ft])(30 in/[12 in/ft]) = (4)(2.5) ft² = 10 ft²

In general, method 1 is better when working with relatively low numbers. For example, a swatch of fabric 4 inches wide and 10 inches long is 40 square inches; dividing this into 144 gives 0.273 ft². Using method 2 in this case would result in the multiplication of two decimal numbers with a value less than 1.0 to achieve the same answer.