Working with color on computers can be both a richly rewarding and a very frustrating experience for users. A good deal of this frustration stems from the inability to work effectively with colors in various spaces or to interchange colors between devices with indiscriminate ease. It is also difficult to reproduce color on different devices because the color producing capability of all color devices is not the same. When color rendering is performed, both the source and the destination color producing capabilities must be taken into account. Being able to understand and manage color devices is an insurmountable task for most clients. This paper describes a color reference model that allows colors to be handled polymorphically, independent of their color space, and which incorporates a framework for matching colors automatically between devices. The load on the user is greatly diminished thus allowing her to devote more attention to the use of color rather than to its constitution.Taligent, which is a joint venture formed by Apple and IBM, will very shortly release a new fully object bas-ed operating system (TalOS) and an object based application environment system (TalAES). Both of these software products have color handling capability built in from the ground up. The TalAES can run on a variety of operating systems. These new OS and AES systems will be extensible from both the top and the bottom. Since color concerns were addressed from the outset, color from the user standpoint works in a much more seamless and intuitive manner. Because of the object nature of the software, code is reusable, product development is shortened, and usage is simplified. This paper discusses at a rather high level the basic color architecture that is in both software systems.