Certainly cloud inhomogeneity is not only important for cumulus or stratocumulus clouds on which the focus of most of the current studies is. To show that the impact of contrail cirrus microphysical inhomogeneity on cloud albedo can be deduced, fields of ice water content, effective radius, number density, and size distribution of ice particles generated by large eddy simulations (LESs) have been used within two-dimensional radiative transfer schemes to elucidate the effect of cloud inhomogeneity on area average radiative properties of contrails at evolution stages in the late dispersion regime. The results obtained indicate that differences in shortwave cloud albedo between homogeneous and inhomogeneous conditions remain small for fresh contrails but can become important if contrails would attain larger optical depths. In that case larger differences were obtained at which the albedo for horizontal homogeneous conditions is always larger than the corresponding value for inhomogeneous conditions. ¿ 1998 American Geophysical Union