A theoretical scheme describing effects of interfacial profiles on the properties of confined excitons in InxGa1-xAs/GaAs spherical quantum dots (QDs) is presented. A two parameter variational method is used to calculate the heavy-hole and light-hole exciton energy. Our numerical results show differences in the ground state exciton energy higher than 100 mev due to gradual rather than abrupt interfaces in a 35 Angstrom QD. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.