In the automotive industry, color quality control is increasingly done by reflection measurements. We discuss how color tolerances are set in specifications to suppliers of add-on parts and to paint suppliers. We mention several factors that often lead to unrealistically tight settings, and therefore to incorrect rejections and unnecessary high productions costs. We show that this is likely to occur when the dE(ab) color difference equation is used, or when a strict criterion separating pass from fail is used instead of specifying a grey area where instrumental monitoring needs to be followed by visual assessments. Unrealistically, tight tolerances also result from halving tolerances in the supply-customer chain in an attempt to compensate color variations due to uncontrolled application conditions. Tolerances should be widened further when a gap separates an add-on part from the car body, making visual discrimination of color differences less critical. Other common situations where tolerances should be widened are the presence of visual texture in effect coatings, the lightness of metallic coatings becoming very high (L*> 100) and measurement geometries close to the gloss angle. Finally, we address the issue that instrumental color tolerances should not be tighter than what is allowed by instrumental reproducibility, repeatability, and inter-instrument agreement. Accounting for these factors, we provide a set of reasonable values for tolerances on color and on visual texture parameters, based on our own practical experience. But realistic tolerance values depend very much on actual conditions, and should be agreed in tripartite discussions among automotive industry, suppliers of add-on parts, and paint supplier. (c) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 39, 88-98, 2014