A new liquid chromatographic (LC)-chemometric approach was developed for the determination of sunset yellow (SUN) and tartrazine (TAR) in commercial preparations. This approach uses LC and chemometric calibration methods, i.e., classical least-squares (CLS), principal component regression (PCR), and partial-least squares (PLS), simultaneously. The combined LC-chemometric approaches, denoted as LC-CLS, LC-PCR, and LC-PLS, are based on photodiode array (PDA) detection at multiple wavelengths. Optimum chromatographic separation of SUN and TAR with allura red as the internal standard (IS) was obtained by using a Waters Symmetry (R) C18 column, 5 mu m, 4.6 x 250 mm, and 0.2 M acetate buffer (pH 5)-acetonitrile-methanol-bidistilled water (55 + 20 + 15 + 10, v/v) as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 1.9 mL/min. The LC data sets consisting of the ratios of analyte peak areas to the IS peak area were obtained by using PDA detection at 5 wavelengths (465, 470, 475, 480, and 485 nm). LC-chemometric calibrations for SUN and TAR were separately constructed by using the relationship between the peak-area ratio and the training sets for each colorant. LC-chemometric approaches were tested for different synthetic mixtures containing SUN and TAR in the presence of the IS. These LC-chemometric calibrations were applied to a commercial preparation of the 2 colorants. The experimental results of the LC-chemometric approaches were compared with those obtained by a developed classical LC method using single-wavelength detection.