Two simple, rapid and sensitive extractive spectrophotometric methods have been developed for the assay of ceterizine hydrochloride (CTZH) in bulk drug and in pharmaceutical preparations. These methods are based on the formation of chloroform soluble complexes between CTZH with bromocresol purple (BCP) or bromophenol blue (BPB) in Walpole buffer of pH 2.64 with an absorption maximum at 409 nm and at 413 nm for BCP and BPB, respectively. Reaction conditions were optimised to obtain the maximum colour intensity. The absorbance was found to increase linearly with increase in concentration of CTZH, which was corroborated by the calculated correlation coefficient value (0.9991-0.9995). The system obeyed Beer's law in the range of 1-16 and 1.5-21 mul ml(-1) for BCP and BPB. respectively. The various analytical parameters have been evaluated. The results obtained by the proposed methods were statistically compared by means of students t-test and by the variance ratio, F-test with those of the reported method and have shown to be in excellent agreement with the reported method. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.