Imperial Quarts to Liters (qt (UK) to L)

1 imperial quart equals 1.1365225 liters exactly.

1 imperial quart = 1.1365225 liters

How to convert imperial quarts to liters

To convert imperial quarts to liters, multiply the number of imperial quarts by 1.1365225. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply liters by 0.8798769932 (rounded).

liters = imperial quarts × 1.1365225

Example: 10 imperial quarts = 11.365225 liters.

Pints, quarts, gallons and fluid ounces differ between the US and the UK. Units are labeled 'US' or 'imperial' to avoid confusion.

About these units

Imperial Quart (qt (UK))

Imperial (British)Current unit

One quarter of an imperial gallon, 1.1365 L (40 imperial fluid ounces).

Quart comes from the Latin quartus, through French quart, and simply means a quarter: one quarter of a gallon. Because gallons of different sizes were in use over the centuries, quarts varied with them. The imperial version descends from the gallon fixed by the Weights and Measures Act 1824, defined by the weight of ten pounds of distilled water, which gave about 4.54 liters.

The modern figure is exact. The imperial gallon is now 4.54609 liters, so the imperial quart is 1.1365225 liters, equal to two imperial pints, eight gills or 40 imperial fluid ounces. British law still lists the quart as a quarter of a gallon among supplementary units. It is about 1.2 US liquid quarts, so recipes and cans from Britain, Canada and the United States can differ by a fifth. Canada's federal law even calls the imperial quart a pinte in French.

1 imperial quart = 1.1365225 liters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Quart; Wikipedia: Imperial units; UK Weights and Measures Act 1985, Schedule 1

Liter (L)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One cubic decimeter (1,000 cm³). The everyday metric unit of volume for drinks, fuel and cooking.

The liter was born in revolutionary France. In 1795 it was introduced as a republican unit and defined as one cubic decimeter, while the gram was tied to a cubic centimeter of water. The name comes from the older French litron, itself descended from a Byzantine Greek unit of weight, not volume. A small revision of the decimeter in 1798 left the first liter about 1.000974 of today's cubic decimeter, and in 1879 the international metric authorities adopted the liter with the symbol l.

The liter then took a strange detour. In 1901 it was redefined as the space taken up by one kilogram of pure water at its densest, which made it about 1.000028 cubic decimeters, and that muddled definition lasted until 1964, when it was restored to exactly one cubic decimeter. A capital L was added as an alternative symbol in 1979 because a lowercase l is easy to mistake for the digit 1, and NIST says L is the symbol to use in the United States. A liter of water is close to a kilogram, which is why a one-liter bottle feels like a kilo in the hand.

The liter is the reference unit for volume on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Litre; NIST Guide to the SI, Chapter 5: units outside the SI

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