Ngan (Thai) to Square Meters (ngan to m²)

1 ngan (Thai) equals 400 square meters exactly.

1 ngan (Thai) = 400 square meters

How to convert ngan (Thai) to square meters

To convert ngan (Thai) to square meters, multiply the number of ngan (Thai) by 400. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply square meters by 0.0025.

square meters = ngan (Thai) × 400

Example: 10 ngan (Thai) = 4,000 square meters.

About these units

Ngan (Thai) (ngan)

ThaiTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

A quarter of a rai: exactly 400 m². Used for house plots in Thailand.

Ngan means work in Thai, and as a land unit it is the middle step between the rai and the square wa. Four ngan make one rai, and one ngan holds 100 square wa, so it covers 400 square meters, the area of a square 20 meters on a side.

That size suits a village or suburban house plot, which is why ngan crop up in listings for building land, while farms are quoted in rai. Deeds combine the units, so a title might read as a number of rai, then ngan, then square wa.

The ngan comes from the same traditional Thai scheme as the wa and sen, fixed against metric lengths after the cadastral survey of 1896. Its 400 square meters are exact in the modern definition, and it is about one tenth of an acre.

1 ngan (Thai) = 400 square meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Rai (unit); Wikipedia: Thai units of measurement

Square Meter (m²)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI unit of area: a square one meter on each side. Used for floor areas and property sizes in most of the world.

Squaring the meter was built into the metric system from the start. The French law of 18 Germinal, Year III (7 April 1795) defined the are, the land unit that gave the hectare its name, as exactly 100 square meters, so the square meter was already the foundation of metric land measure. Nobody is credited with inventing it as a separate unit. It is simply the area of a square one meter on each side, and any SI prefix that works for the meter works for it, with the prefix squared along with the unit.

That squaring catches people out: a square kilometer is one million square meters, not one thousand. Since 1983 the meter has been defined through the speed of light, so the square meter is tied to a constant of nature as well as to the second. A hectare, about the area of Trafalgar Square in London, is 10,000 square meters. In everyday terms one square meter is about 10.76 square feet. Unicode has a compatibility character for it, but the recommended way to write it is the plain superscript two: m².

The square meter is the reference unit for area on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Square metre; Wikipedia: Are (unit); NIST: the meter and the SI redefinition

Related conversions

See all area units.