The present invention relates to a method for determining a characteristic number for characterizing the quality of a shade setting of a paint in relation to a color reference, characterized in that colorimetric coordinates of the paint and of the color reference are determined with a spectrophotometer for a number of measurement geometries and wherein respective color differences are calculated and standardized from the colorimetric coordinates of the paint and of the color reference for each measurement geometry of the number of measurement geometries, and where a group of characteristic values calculated from the respective standardized color differences is assigned a scale value for determining the characteristic number by means of an assignment rule to be provided in advance.