In this paper, we present two methods to compress colored 3D triangular meshes in a progressive way. Although many progressive algorithms exist for efficient encoding of connectivity and geometry, none of these techniques consider the color data in spite of its considerable size. Based on the powerful progressive algorithm from Alliez and Desbrun [All01a], we propose two extensions for progressive encoding and reconstruction of vertex colors: a prediction-based method and a mapping table method. In the first one, after transforming the initial RGB space into the Lab space, each vertex color is predicted by a specific scheme using information of its neighboring vertices. The second method considers a mapping table with reduced number of possible colors in order to improve the rate-distortion tradeoff. Results show that the prediction method produces quite good results even in low resolutions, while the mapping table method delivers similar visual results but with a fewer amount of bits transmitted depending on the color complexity of the model.