Printable Tape Measure

How to make a paper tape measure

1. Pick the units and length. 60 inches (150 cm) is the length of a normal sewing tape and is enough for a waist, hips or chest.
2. Print at 100%, never Fit to page, which quietly shrinks the scale.
3. Check the scale: the long edge of any credit or debit card must match the line at the top of the sheet, 85.6 mm.
4. Cut out the strips along the solid lines. Cut strip 2 and the later strips exactly on their left line.
5. Glue them in order: lay the left edge of each strip on the gray GLUE tab of the one before, so the end line of one strip and the start of the next touch. Clear tape on both sides works too.

Each strip is 10 inches (or 25 cm) long and fits across a landscape page, so a 60 inch tape is six strips on one sheet. With inches and cm selected, inches run along the top edge and centimeters along the bottom, like a real tape.

Printable tape measure for body measurements

Paper doesn't stretch around curves as well as cloth, so wrap it loosely and read where the zero end meets the scale. For clothing sizes, measure the waist at its narrowest point, the hips at the widest, and the chest under the arms, keeping the tape level all the way round. For a wrist or a finger, a strip is easier to handle than a full tape. For rings, the printable ring sizer is more precise.

How to read a tape measure

On an inch tape, the longest line is the whole inch. Shorter lines split each inch in halves, then quarters, eighths and, on most tapes, sixteenths. To read a length, find the last whole inch before the end of the object, then count the small marks after it.

Example: the end of a board lands on the third line after the 12. On a 1/16 tape every line is one sixteenth, so it measures 12 3/16 inches. Always reduce the fraction: 12 4/16 is 12 1/4. On a metric tape it's simpler: numbered lines are centimeters, the small lines are millimeters, and the middle line marks 5 mm, so 7 lines past 23 reads 23.7 cm. On this tape the feet are marked in red, the way most US tapes mark 12, 24 and 36 inches.

Tape measure worksheet for practice

Switch the sheet to Reading practice worksheet to print eight pieces of tape with an arrow at a mark, for a quick tape measure test in class, shop or trade training. Choose 1/4, 1/8 or 1/16 inch marks to set the level, or centimeters for metric practice. Each press of New questions draws a fresh set, and the answers are printed upside down at the bottom of the page. For a short straight scale, the printable ruler has 10 inches and 25 cm on one strip.

How we tested this tool

We checked every unit, length and paper combination by script in Google Chrome on Windows: the strips add up to exactly the chosen length, every inch and centimeter number appears once, at its own mark, and nothing spills off the page or overlaps. For the worksheet we generated 1,920 questions and confirmed that each arrow sits exactly on the mark of its printed answer, never on a whole number, with fractions fully reduced. We printed the sheets to PDF with Microsoft Edge and measured the files: one landscape page on US Letter and on A4, 10 inch strips 254 mm long with 1/16 inch marks 1.5875 mm apart, and 25 cm strips with 1 mm marks. The PDFs also showed us three layout problems that we fixed: a centimeter number sat on a cutting line, the worksheet's answer lines were too far from their tapes, and a small "ft" label touched the strip edge. We also tested the page at a 375 px phone width. We haven't yet glued and used a paper tape ourselves on a range of printers; if you do, tell us how it went.

Frequently asked questions