The optical properties of human skin have been of interest to researchers for some time. Their interest is based on a need to know for a variety of different applications, which range from spectral imaging for automated or stand-off detection, non-invasive clinical diagnostic tools, improved models for understanding light propagation, to colour-based applications, such as reproduction of skin colour in photography and printing and colour-matching in cosmetics industries. Here we present a summary of a study that aimed to create a large data set of highquality, human-skin reflectance spectra and quantify the variability of the resulting data set.