For the evaluation of lightness threshold characteristics of the visual color matching the experiment is carried out. By using cathode-ray tube (CRT)-generated color stimuli under five different gray backgrounds, the visual color matching is achieved for 19 neutral standard stimuli with their lightness L* ranging from 5 to 95 by the step of 5 CIELAB unit. Upon the data processing and the analysis of the experimental results, the crispening effect and the Weber's law, which are about the correlation between the visual lightness discrimination threshold of color stimuli and the lightness of the background, are validated. Furthermore the visual color matching data from the present experiment are used to evaluate the CIELAB-based related aberration formulae. For the lightness-difference predicting, the CIEDE2000 outperforms the others, followed by CMC, and with CIE94 and CIELAB the poorest.