The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of color measuring instrument by measuring the color of dental composite resins.

Nine shade light cured composite resin disks were prepared (diameter : 15 mm, thickness : 4 mm). CIE L^*a^*b^* color scale of each disk was measured with 3 different types of spectrophotometer [MiniScan XE plus (Model 4000S, Hunter Lab, USA), CM-3500d (Minolta, Japan) and Specbos 2100 Miniature VIS Reflection spectrometer (Serial No: 319416, JETI Technishe VIS Instrumentic GmbH, Germany)]. Miniscan XE Plus and CM-3500d using identical measuring geometry with different size of viewing aperture. But Specbos 2100 using different measuring geometry.

Within the limitation of this study, there were color difference (ΔE^*) from 2.4 to 7.8 between Miniscan XE Plus and CM-3500d, but L^*, a^*, b^* values showed the high correlation. However, there were great color difference (ΔE^*) in the extent of about 20 between instruments with the different measuring geometry.

Therefore, color scale measured by color measuring instrument should be used as a relative value rather than an absolute value in the field of dentistry.