Microemulsion systems have proved very efficient in color removal from textile wastewater using n-butyl alcohol as cosurfactant. The cosurfactant has a very important role in microemulsified systems, as it is responsible for their stability, mainly in systems formed by ionic surfactants. Although very efficient, n-butyl alcohol is partially soluble in water, which would permit its passage to the effluent. In this work, isoamyl and octyl alcohols, due to their lower solubility in water, were used as cosurfactants to evaluate their influence in color removal. The colorimetry system used was the CIE L*a*b* (CIELAB) color space and CIE L*a*b* color difference (DeltaE*ab). The wastewater used in this study was the reactive exhausted dye liquor from a dye house (first discharge) containing Procion Yellow H-E4R (Cl Reactive Yellow 84), Procion Blue H-ERD (CI Reactive Blue 160) and Procion Red H-E3B (CI Reactive Red 120). The obtained results were modeled using an experimental planning (the Scheffe net) and evaluated through isoresponse diagrams by correlation graphs between experimental values and those obtained by the models with an error lower than 4%. All the optimized systems were very efficient and more than 94% of the dyes contained in the effluent were removed. The microemulsion load capacity was determined using a synthetic solution containing, the same dyes present in the reactive exhausted dyebath, but 200 times concentrated, and the dyes extraction was more than 99.6%. By comparing n-butyl, isoamyl and octyl alcohols, it was observed that the system using isoamyl alcohol presented slightly better color removal and much higher load capacity than the n-butyl and octyl alcohols. (C) 2004 Society of Chemical Industry.