Shade sorting is the process of assigning samples of the same nominal color into groups having no significant color variation. Use of modern spectrophotometers and color measurement technology make it possible to obtain precise color differences between samples. When these color differences are viewed as distances between points, the shade sorting problem is seen to be equivalent to the clustering problem in the mathematical literature. Several mathematical techniques for clustering complete linkage clustering, vertex labeling, and set covering-are explained and compared for their efficiency when applied to shade sorting. A particular implementation of complete linkage clustering called Clemson Color Clustering (CCC) is found to perform well as compared to the other reviewed methods.