AbstractBased on a survey about the applications of diffuse reflectance spectroscopy various methods for quantitative evaluation of these spectra are presented. At first the correction of diffuse reflectance spectra of luminescent samples and the determination of pigment concentrations from reflectance data of powder mixtures are considered in detail. Furthermore a recently suggested method is described enabling the bulk‐absorption coefficients of substrate materials and the molar absorption coefficients of adsorbed molecules respectively to be calculated from diffuse reflectance spectra of powdered adsorbent‐adsorba