The average 16-year-old girl is about 5 feet 4 inches tall (roughly 163 cm). This figure comes from CDC growth charts, which place the 50th percentile for girls at age 16 right around 63.9 inches. Most 16-year-old girls fall between 5 feet 1 inch and 5 feet 7 inches, which represents the range from the 10th to the 90th percentile.
What the Percentiles Mean
Growth charts work by comparing your height to other girls the same age. If you’re at the 50th percentile, half of 16-year-old girls are taller than you and half are shorter. Being at the 25th or 75th percentile doesn’t signal a problem. Pediatricians pay more attention to whether you’ve been tracking along a consistent curve over time than where exactly that curve sits. A girl who has always been at the 20th percentile is growing normally. A girl who drops from the 60th to the 20th percentile over a year or two may warrant a closer look.
Here’s a quick snapshot of common percentile heights for 16-year-old girls:
- 10th percentile: about 5 feet 1 inch (155 cm)
- 25th percentile: about 5 feet 2.5 inches (159 cm)
- 50th percentile: about 5 feet 4 inches (163 cm)
- 75th percentile: about 5 feet 5 inches (166 cm)
- 90th percentile: about 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm)
How Much Taller Will You Get After 16?
For most girls, the answer is: not much. The female growth spurt peaks around age 12, roughly a year after breast development begins. By 16, the vast majority of height gain is already behind you. Most girls reach their adult height somewhere between ages 13 and 15, though many continue to add small amounts of height into their late teens.
That remaining growth is typically half an inch to an inch at most. Growth plates, the areas of developing cartilage near the ends of long bones, gradually harden and close during the mid-to-late teens. Once they close, no further height gain is possible. In girls, this process tends to wrap up earlier than in boys, which is one reason the average adult woman is shorter than the average adult man.
If you’re 16 and wondering whether you’re “done,” your current height is likely very close to your final adult height. A pediatrician can order a simple X-ray of the hand and wrist to check whether your growth plates are still open if there’s any uncertainty.
What Determines Your Height
About 80 percent of your height is genetic. Scientists have identified thousands of gene variants that each nudge height up or down by small amounts, making it genuinely difficult to predict exactly how tall any individual child will end up. The simplest rule of thumb most people use is looking at their parents: tall parents tend to have tall children, and shorter parents tend to have shorter children. But “tend to” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Siblings with the same parents can differ by several inches.
The remaining 20 percent comes from environment, and nutrition plays the biggest role. A well-nourished, healthy, active child is likely to be taller as an adult than a child with a poor diet or chronic illness during the growth years. Factors that matter start even before birth: a mother’s nutrition during pregnancy, smoking, and exposure to hazardous substances can all influence a baby’s eventual height. Socioeconomic factors like income, education, and access to healthcare also play a part, largely because they shape nutrition and overall health during childhood.
When Your Height Falls Outside the Typical Range
Being significantly shorter or taller than average at 16 is usually just normal variation. Some girls are genetically predisposed to be 4 feet 11 inches, others to be 5 feet 9 inches, and both are perfectly healthy. The situations that sometimes point to an underlying issue involve a noticeable change in growth pattern rather than simply being short or tall. A girl who was growing steadily along the 40th percentile and then stalls for a year or more could have a nutritional deficiency, a thyroid issue, or another hormonal factor worth investigating.
Late puberty can also shift the timeline. Girls who start developing later than average may still be gaining meaningful height at 16, while their earlier-developing peers finished growing at 14. This is called constitutional delay, and it’s a normal variation, not a disorder. These girls typically reach a final adult height that’s right in line with their genetic potential; they just get there on a slightly different schedule.