A methodology is disclosed to achieve adaptive illumination independent matching of spot colors. In one embodiment, the methodology includes an iterative process to determine a variety device specific recipes for spot colors across different illumination spectra, and then automatically choosing and/or recommending the optimal recipe that provides the lowest color dispersion across a variety of illuminants under consideration. This approach may be used with a variety of gamut mapping techniques. According to a further embodiment, the methodology may be used with a ray-based gamut mapping method.