Refractory materials have been widely used in high-temperature industries, in which the boron content has a great influence on the performance. To control the detection quality and satisfy the requirement of production and scientific research of refractories, conditional tests involving three methods for the boron determination (alkali titrimetry, inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), and curcumin absorption spectrophotometry) were carried out in this work. The affecting factors on the determination of boron were analyzed and discussed by performing the experiment. The results show that compared with curcumin absorption spectrophotometry, alkali titrimetry and ICP-AES have the advantages of simple operation, quick analysis and high precision (relative standard deviation <5%), which are more appropriate for boron determination in refractories.