The colour pigments of paprika (Capsicum annuum) were separated by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) using normal (4 mm I.D.) and microbore (2 mm I.D.) C18 silica columns and gradient elution (water-acetonitrile-methanol). The relative standard deviation of retention times (lower than 1.5%) and that of peak areas (3-5%) were similar for both column proving the good stability of the HPLC system. The high standard deviation of peak areas may be due to the presence of overlapping peaks. The number of separated pigment fractions was considerably higher on microbore (75) than on normal ODS column (34) proving the superiority of microbore column.