Color is one of the main problems in wastewater and many techniques can be applied to remove it. In this work, nanofiltration, coagulation-flocculation and their combination were studied to remove color from five reactive dyes. Nanofiltration was carried out using an energy saving nanofiltration membrane in a 0.5 L pilot plant at 10 bar. Coagulation-flocculation experiments were performed in a jar test apparatus using an anionic polyelectrolyte flocculant, FeCl3 as a coagulant agent and two different resins: melamine-urea-formaldehyde and polyamine resin. From the results it was concluded that nanofiltration removed in the order of 40 and 80% of color for the five dyes while coagulation-flocculation reached between 85 and 95% of color removal for four dyes except in the case of polyamine resin for RB5. The combination of these techniques dramatically improved the removals reaching over 98% of color removal for all dyes except for RB5 that achieved a 90%. The combined process also decreases COD values as it implies the use of lower resin concentration than coagulation-flocculation. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.