Perches to Square Meters & Feet
Convert perches to area units.
About the Perches to Square Meters & Feet
A perch is an old unit of area still used in land measurement in Sri Lanka and parts of the Commonwealth. One perch is 25.29 square metres.
How to use it
- Enter the number of perches.
- Read the equivalent in square metres and square feet.
The formula
The perch is an old unit of area that survives in land measurement, particularly in Sri Lanka, parts of the Caribbean, and older British and Irish deeds.
1 perch = 30.25 square yards = 272.25 square feet = 25.29285 square metres
Square metres = Perches × 25.29285
Square feet = Perches × 272.25
The odd-looking constants come from the perch's origin as a length: one perch, also called a rod or pole, is 16½ feet. A square perch is that length squared — 16.5 × 16.5 = 272.25 square feet. Nothing about the number is arbitrary once you know it started as a stick.
Larger units follow the same lineage: 40 perches make a rood, and 160 perches make an acre.
Worked examples
| Perches | Square metres | Square feet | Roughly |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25.29 | 272.25 | a small room |
| 10 | 252.93 | 2,722.50 | a modest building plot |
| 20 | 505.86 | 5,445.00 | a typical suburban lot |
| 160 | 4,046.86 | 43,560.00 | exactly one acre |
The last row is the useful anchor. 160 perches is an acre, exactly — 43,560 square feet, which is itself 4,840 square yards. These are not rounded conversions but definitions inherited from medieval English land measurement, which is why they survive unchanged in property deeds centuries later and long after anyone stopped measuring with an actual pole.
Common mistakes
- Confusing the perch of area with the perch of length. A perch is 16½ feet as a length and 272.25 square feet as an area. Property descriptions almost always mean the area.
- Using a rounded 25 square metres. The exact figure is 25.29285. On a 20-perch plot, rounding to 25 loses nearly 6 square metres — small on paper and not small in a boundary dispute.
- Assuming a perch is standard everywhere. Some historical regions used local perches of different lengths. Modern usage settles on the statute perch of 16½ feet, but very old deeds are worth checking.
- Mixing up roods and perches. A rood is 40 perches, or a quarter of an acre. Old deeds often list area as acres, roods and perches together, in that order.
Terms explained
- Perch
- An area of 272.25 square feet, or 25.29285 square metres. Also called a square rod or square pole.
- Rod / pole
- The original length of 16½ feet. Squaring it gives the perch of area.
- Rood
- 40 perches, a quarter of an acre. Common in older British and Irish deeds.
- Acre
- 160 perches, 4,840 square yards, or 43,560 square feet. Originally the land one ox team could plough in a day.
- Hectare
- 10,000 square metres, about 2.471 acres. The metric unit that replaced the acre in most official use.
- Chain
- 66 feet, or four perches. Still visible in the length of a cricket pitch.
Common questions
- How many square feet are in a perch?
- 272.25 exactly — the square of 16½ feet, the length of the original perch or rod.
- How many perches are in an acre?
- 160 exactly. That is also 4 roods, since a rood is 40 perches.
- How do I convert perches to square metres?
- Multiply by 25.29285. Twenty perches is 505.86 square metres.
- Where is the perch still used?
- Most commonly in Sri Lanka, where land is routinely advertised by the perch, and in parts of the Caribbean. It also appears in historical deeds across Britain, Ireland and the eastern United States.
- Why is a perch such an awkward number?
- Because it began as a physical measuring stick 16½ feet long. Squaring that gives 272.25 square feet — awkward in decimal and perfectly natural in its own system.
- What is the difference between a perch, a rod and a pole?
- For length, nothing — all three name 16½ feet. Perch is simply the term that stuck for the squared version used in land area.
- How big is 10 perches in practical terms?
- About 252.9 square metres or 2,722.5 square feet — a comfortable building plot in most residential contexts.
- How do I convert perches to hectares?
- Multiply by 25.29285 to get square metres, then divide by 10,000. There are about 395.4 perches in a hectare.