Oven temperature conversion chart: °C to °F, fan ovens too

If a recipe gives an oven temperature in one scale and your oven dial uses the other, this page gives you the setting to use. The two tables below cover the range nearly every recipe uses, from slow roasting to pizza. Each row also shows the fan-oven setting, because a recipe written for a conventional oven will run hot in a fan oven if you just convert the number.

The formula, and why recipes round it

°F = °C × 9/5 + 32 and °C = (°F − 32) × 5/9. That is exact. But almost no oven can hold a temperature to the degree, and most dials step in 5 or 10 degree marks, so recipes round. European recipes usually round to the nearest 10 °C; American recipes round to the nearest 25 °F. That is why 180 °C and 350 °F appear together in nearly every cookbook even though 180 °C is really 356 °F.

Celsius to Fahrenheit (conventional and fan)

Fahrenheit to Celsius (conventional and fan)

UK recipes also print Gas Mark next to these numbers. Gas Mark is a separate scale with its own table, covered in our Gas Mark conversion table, so it is left out here.

Fan vs conventional: two conventions that don't match

A fan oven blows hot air around the food, which moves heat into it faster. To get the same result you set it lower. European recipe writers and appliance makers usually say about 20 °C lower. That works out to 36 °F. American convection advice usually says 25 °F lower, which is only about 13.9 °C. So the same cake, adjusted by each rule, ends up a few degrees apart.

Neither rule is wrong. Fans differ in strength and ovens differ in how well they hold temperature. Our view: start with the European 20 °C cut for cakes and bread, which brown fast in a fan oven, and the smaller US cut for roasts, where a little extra browning is welcome. Then check five minutes before the time in the recipe.

Worked example: a US recipe in a European fan oven

A banana bread recipe says 350 °F for 60 minutes. Step one, convert: (350 − 32) × 5/9 = 176.67 °C. Step two, round to the dial: 180 °C. Step three, the recipe was written for a conventional oven, so for a fan oven take off 20 °C: 160 °C fan. Keep the time the same, but start checking at about 50 minutes, since fan ovens often finish a little early.

Going the other way, a British recipe that says 200 °C (fan 180 °C) becomes 392 °F exactly, which a US cook would set as 400 °F conventional or 375 °F on convection.

When the dial is the real problem

Home ovens are often off by more than the rounding in these tables. An oven thermometer on the middle rack, read after a 20 minute preheat, tells you how far your dial is out. For meat, doneness is about the food's inside temperature, not the oven's, so use a probe thermometer and the Celsius to Fahrenheit converter if the target is listed in the other scale. For meat targets, see our meat temperature safety guide.