Objective: The objective of this study was to compare the performance of visual shade matching and spectrophotometric measurements. Materials and methods: A total of 100 observers matched pairs of corresponding shade tabs from two VITA classical A1-D4 shade guides. The tab identifiers on one shade guide were masked. Lack of visible color differences between the corresponding tabs was confirmed by means of an intraoral spectrophotometer. Means and standard deviations were calculated. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) (? = 0.05) with a Bonferroni correction was performed to detect significance of differences between groups. Results: A total of 72.5% of tab pairs (or 11.6 tabs) were matched using the visual method, and 98.9% were matched using the spectrophotometer (P 0.001). Female observers showed significantly better results than male observers (P = 0.027). Both genders showed the highest visual scores in group B, followed by groups C, A, and D. Conclusions: Instrumental shade-matching systems have the potential to improve color matching in dentistry. Results were influenced by gender. Clinical relevance: The dental spectrophotometer exhibited a significantly higher percentage of correct matches of corresponding shade tabs compared with conventional visual shade matching.