Liters to dl converter, one liter is ten deciliters.

To convert liters to dl, multiply the liters by 10. So 1 L is 10 dl, 1.5 L is 15 dl and 0.33 L is 3.3 dl. Move the decimal point one place to the right. The conversion is exact. A deciliter (dl or dL) is a tenth of a liter, 100 mL, and a liter holds ten of them. Use this page when a container is labelled in liters but your recipe or your measuring jug is in deciliters.

How to use the converter

1. Type the amount in the Liters (L) box. A decimal such as 1.5 works.
2. The big result shows Deciliters (dL). Use Decimals in the side column to fix the number of places.
3. The cards under the result show the same amount in other units.
4. Type in the second box, or press ⇄, to go the other way.
5. Click a row in Common values to load it. Copy result, Copy link, Copy table and Print chart keep the answer. Start again resets the box.
6. Under the tables, Convert a list takes many amounts at once. Paste one per line, for example a column from a spreadsheet, and read them all in the units shown above. Copy results copies the table, and the swap button turns the list around.

Why it is times 10

Deci is the SI prefix for one tenth, 10^-1 (BIPM list of SI prefixes and NIST metric SI prefixes, checked 26 Oct 2026). So a deciliter is smaller than a liter, and the same amount takes a bigger number in deciliters. This is the direction people get wrong: the unit gets smaller, so the number grows. A quick check is that the dl number always has to be larger than the liter number.

Liters to deciliters in a table

Worked examples

• A 2 liter bottle. 2 × 10 = 20 dl.
• A 0.75 liter wine bottle. 7.5 dl.
• A US gallon. 3.785 L is 37.8541 dl.
• A US quart. 9.4635 dl, a little under 10, since a quart is a little under a liter.
• A 6 liter pot. 60 dl, which is also 600 cl.

Using it with a recipe

Say a soup recipe asks for 12 dl of stock, and your pot is marked in liters. The answer is 1.2 L. Going the other way, if your jug holds 1.5 L and the recipe wants 4 dl at a time, you can fill it 15 ÷ 4 = 3.75 times. A US cup is 2.3659 dl, so a 10 dl liter is about 4.23 cups, a little more than 4.

Mistakes to avoid

The first is dividing instead of multiplying. The second is stopping one prefix short: deciliters are tenths, centiliters are hundredths and milliliters are thousandths, so 1 L is 10 dl, 100 cl and 1,000 mL. The third is mixing up dL (deciliter) and daL (dekaliter, 10 liters). The fourth is reading dl in a medical or lab setting. In blood tests, mg/dL is a concentration, not a volume, and this converter does not handle it.

See also Dl to liters, Cl to liters, Liters to mL and Liters to cups.