The world of color is a mixture of three attributes: hue, lightness and saturation. Hue: butter is yellow, cheddar is orange, Penicillium-veined cheese is partly blue-green… that’s how we think of color in everyday language. Hue is the term used in the world of color for the classifications of red, yellow, blue… The continuum of these hues results in a color wheel. Lightness: colors can be separated into bright and dark colors when their lightnesses (how bright they are) are compared. This lightness can be measured independently of hue. Saturation: vivid colors and dull colors; this attribute is completely separate from those of both hue and lightness. The first part of this review presents a description of the techniques in use in dairy food color analysis. Then, practical applications of color measurements are presented in ante-processing (i.e. color of milk related to cattle feeding), processing (e.g. butter, cheese), post-processing and quality control of dairy food products.