Although the contraceptive prevalence rate in Sri Lanka is high, a subset of women is not practicing contraception. The proportion of those women who do not want any more children or do not want another child soon, and therefore have an unmet need for contraception, was estimated using several alternative measures, and ranges from as low as five percent of married women of reproductive age to as high as 31 percent. Furthermore, between 13 percent and 52 percent of women who are not using a method and between 45 percent and 80 percent of all women at risk of pregnancy are experiencing an unmet need. A particularly high incidence of unmet need for spacing is found among young women with one or two children. The results support the hypothesis that there is a fairly sizable unmet need for contraception in Sri Lanka, the high rate of contraceptive use notwithstanding.