Paper coating obviously plays an important role in printing and converting performance and thus a thorough knowledge of coating structure and chemistry, its generation from the wet state of the colour layer and its reaction to downstream processing, end-use and recycling, is needed to understand current products as well as to develop new products. Coating characterization methods may be divided into two subcategories; research methods and quality control methods. The latter category typically contains methods based on standards and are fast tools to evaluate the quality of the coatings, on-line, at-line or off-line. The instruments used in paper coating research aim to provide absolute rather than relative information, with the goal of offering greater insight into mechanisms underlying paper performance. These methods are accordingly often more demanding in terms of sample preparation and analysis time, and in some cases are still under development. This paper summarizes the achievements, limitations and future challenges faced by established analysis methods as well as emerging methods which could be used in paper coating characterization.