In this work, a procedure is described to estimate the CIE tristimulus values of Munsell color chips under new illluminants from CIE tristimulus values under specific illuminant. The estimation was performed by multiple linear regression (MLR) and principal component analysis (PCA) techniques. In addition. the effects of illuminants combination and Munsell hue, value and chroma on reconstruction of CIE tristimulus values were evaluated in both methods. The results obtained indicate that the performance of principal component method is better than multiple regression method. The accuracy of estimation depends on the initial and target illuminants and hue, chroma and value of samples. (c) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl. 34. 100-107, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI 10.1002/col.20477