Chlorite delignification is well known as a fast, efficient, and selective laboratory method for delignifying pulp samples (i.e. for removing the lignin without affecting the other components in the pulp). Less well known is the fact that this method can also be used to achieve high brightness in pulp samples in a single stage. Thus, bleaching becomes much simpler and can be performed more often. However, delignification should take place under conditions appropriate to each type of pulp in order to obtain pulps with high brightness and/or high pulp viscosity. Some examples are given in this paper. It should be noted that this method ought only to be used on laboratory-scale and that it is not suited to mill-scale bleaching, mainly due to the high chemical cost of bleaching