This study proposes a universal color quantization for different color spaces. First, we analyze and compare the differences between common used color spaces, for example, RGB, YCrCb, YIQ, I1I2I3, HSV, L*a*b* and L*u*v*. Second, we analyze the distributions of colors used for real color images. On the basis of the analysis, a universal color quantization is proposed for color image retrieval in various color spaces. Experimental results show that that the proposed color quantization is effective for color image retrieval and superior to other methods.