It has been more or less solved - it&#x27;s called the Pantone Color system. That said, it doesn&#x27;t really work the way you&#x27;d expect. It&#x27;ll get you close (say, if you need a consistent color for your brand), but a pantone color on it&#x27;s own isn&#x27;t enough to define a material.<p>The issue with defining physical colour codes is that it gets really complicated when you consider finish. With screen color, you have only one finish, and that&#x27;s whatever the user&#x27;s monitor happens to have. With paints and plastics the finish (how glossy the surface is, how metallic it is, coated or uncoated, inclusions like metal flake, etc) really messes things up. This tends to &quot;break&quot; systems like Pantone, and means that it&#x27;s really hard to choose a few variables to absolutely define a color.