Pigmented coatings with a high reflectance are of interest for several technological applications. We discuss three criteria for the maximization of the reflectance, based on the total scattered radiation, the total scattered radiation minus the radiation scattered in the forward direction, and the radiation scattered in the backward hemisphere. The scattering parameters of single particles were evaluated by Lorenz-Mie theory, and the reflectance of the coating was obtained from a four-flux model. We clearly show that the optimization based on the third criterion leads to the highest reflectance values and it is consistent with a direct optimization of the reflectance from the four-flux model.