Centimeters to Pixels (CSS) (cm to px)

1 centimeter equals 37.79527559 pixels (CSS) (rounded).

1 centimeter = 37.79527559 pixels (CSS)

How to convert centimeters to pixels (CSS)

To convert centimeters to pixels (CSS), multiply the number of centimeters by 37.79527559. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply pixels (CSS) by 0.02645833333 (rounded).

pixels (CSS) = centimeters × 37.79527559

Example: 10 centimeters = 377.9527559 pixels (CSS).

About these units

Centimeter (cm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One hundredth of a meter. Used for body measurements, clothing and everyday objects.

Scientists, rather than shopkeepers, gave the centimeter its place. In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauss proposed a system of absolute units built on length, mass and time, choosing the millimeter, milligram and second. In 1873 a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, whose members included James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), recommended the centimeter, gram and second instead. That CGS system dominated physics for decades, until the metre-kilogram-second system replaced it in the mid-twentieth century and led to SI.

CGS units proved awkward for rooms and buildings, which run to hundreds of centimeters, but the centimeter itself never went away. It is still the everyday unit for height, clothing and small objects, and it appears in map scales and rainfall reports. An adult fingernail is roughly one centimeter wide, and a milliliter is defined as exactly one cubic centimeter. An inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. The CGS system itself survives mainly in theoretical physics and astrophysics, where Gaussian units are still common.

1 centimeter = 0.01 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; Wikipedia: Centimetre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Pixel (CSS) (px)

Typography & screenCurrent unit

The CSS reference pixel, defined as 1/96 of an inch. Physical screens vary, but browsers use this value to convert pixels to print units.

Pixel is a contraction of picture element, itself built from pix, a 1930s shortening of pictures. The idea is older than the word: Paul Nipkow's 1888 German patent spoke of a Bildpunkt, or picture point, and the phrase picture element appears in US patents filed as early as 1911. Frederic C. Billingsley of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory published pixel in 1965, writing about scanned images from space probes to the Moon and Mars, and said he had learned it from Keith E. McFarland, who reported it was already in use around 1963.

A pixel in a photograph is a sample, not a fixed length, and screens vary widely in size. CSS therefore defines px as an abstract reference pixel of exactly 1/96 inch, based on the visual angle of one pixel on a 96 dpi device held at arm's length. The CSS specification gives that angle as about 0.0213 degrees for a nominal arm's length of 28 inches, which works out to about 0.26 mm. On sharper screens a single CSS pixel spans several device pixels. Earlier CSS versions did not fix the ratio, but too much existing content assumed 96 dpi.

1 pixel (CSS) = 0.0002645833333 meters (approximately).

Sources: W3C: CSS Values and Units Module Level 3, absolute lengths; Wikipedia: Pixel

Related conversions

See all length units.