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Given a set S of n colored sites, each s ∈ S associated with a distance-to-site function δ_s : ℝ² → ℝ, we consider two distance-to-color functions for each color: one takes the minimum of δ_s for sites s ∈ S in that color and the other takes the maximum. These two sets of distance functions induce two families of higher-order Voronoi diagrams for colors in the plane, namely, the minimal and maximal order-k color Voronoi diagrams, which include various well-studied Voronoi diagrams as special cases. In this paper, we derive an exact upper bound 4k(n-k)-2n on the total number of vertices in both the minimal and maximal order-k color diagrams for a wide class of distance functions δ_s that satisfy certain conditions, including the case of point sites S under convex distance functions and the L_p metric for any 1 ≤ p ≤ ∞. For the L_1 (or, L_∞) metric, and other convex polygonal metrics, we show that the order-k minimal diagram of point sites has O(min{k(n-k), (n-k)²}) complexity, while its maximal counterpart has O(min{k(n-k), k²}) complexity. To obtain these combinatorial results, we extend the Clarkson-Shor framework to colored objects, and demonstrate its application to several fundamental geometric structures, including higher-order color Voronoi diagrams, colored j-facets, and levels in the arrangements of piecewise linear/algebraic curves/surfaces. We also present iterative algorithms to compute higher-order color Voronoi diagrams.