How to Measure Your Height at Home Accurately

What you need

You do not need special equipment to get a useful number at home. The method below follows the steps the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes for measuring a child’s height at home, and the same steps work for adults.

• A flat wall with no baseboard molding, on a firm floor such as tile or wood rather than carpet.
• A hardcover book, a clipboard or another flat, rigid object with square corners.
• A metal tape measure and a pencil.
• A second person, if you can.

Step-by-step

Take off shoes, bulky clothing, hats and hair ornaments, and loosen any hairstyle that would raise the top of your head. Stand with your feet flat, together and against the wall, legs straight, arms at your sides and shoulders level. Look straight ahead.

Your head, shoulders, buttocks and heels should touch the wall. CDC notes that body shape may keep every point from touching, so do not strain to force contact.

• Hold the flat object at a right angle to the wall and lower it until it firmly touches the top of your head.
• Lightly mark the wall along the bottom edge of the object.
• Step away and measure from the floor to the mark with the tape measure.
• Record the result to the nearest 1/8 inch or 0.1 centimeter, as CDC suggests.

Why a helper makes it more accurate

CDC’s instructions ask the person reading the measurement to keep their eyes level with the ruler or book. That is hard to do on your own, because you cannot see the mark while your head and heels are in position.

When you measure yourself, it is easy to lift your heels, tilt your chin or tip the book without noticing. A helper can check your posture, hold the book square and read the mark at eye level.

Measure twice

Repeat the process after stepping away from the wall and standing up again. Small differences between two readings are normal, and a repeat shows how much of the difference comes from the method rather than from you. If the two numbers differ by more than a few millimeters, check your posture and the position of the book, then measure again.

Measure at about the same time of day each time, because height changes slightly over the day. Once you have a number, type it into the height comparison tool to see how it looks next to someone else’s. The tool only draws the heights you enter, to scale. It does not measure anything.

If you are measuring a child and have questions about growth, talk with a doctor or pediatrician rather than relying on a home measurement.