The lightness, chroma and hue tolerances with respect to the standard colour position in the CIELAB space have been studied in detail using the various existing data sets and the set form this study. The lightness tolerance showed a clear dependency upon the metric lightness for medium to light colour, but in the case of dark colours there was a discrepancy between the data sets. Both the chroma and hue tolerances showed dependency upon both the chroma and hue-angle and not the single dependency upon the metric chroma, as assumed in the CIE94 formula. New weighting functions were derived from the above experimental evidence, and finally a new formula, LCD(Leeds Colour Difference) was proposed. The LCD formula is nearly as simple and flexible as CIE94 but smoothes the individual weighting functions, especially for lightness tolerances for light colours and chromaticity discrimination near the blue region.