A method of characterizing a wet paint layer stack of a painted body by individual parameters of the wet paint layers, based on fitting to a physical model, is provided. The method includes: emitting a THz radiation signal towards the painted body such that the THz radiation interacts with the wet paint layer stack; detecting a response signal being the detected THz radiation signal having interacted with the wet paint layer stack; determining model parameters of the physical model by optimizing the model parameters such that a predicted response signal of the physical model is fitted to the detected response signal, at least some of the model parameters being indicative of optical properties of the wet paint layers and of a wet paint layer thickness; and determining, from the determined model parameters, the individual paint layer parameters of at least one of the wet paint layers.