This paper deals with spatial damping identification methods. In contrast to the commonly used damping methods (modal, proportional) the spatial damping information improves structural models with a known location of the damping sources. The Lee-Kim, Chen-Ju-Tsuei, Fritzen IV and local equation of motion methods were theoretically and experimentally compared. Experimentally, the spatial damping identification was tested against: modal and spatial incompleteness, differences in viscous and hysteretic damping models, the performance of identification methods and the effect of damping treatments. It was found that for a structure with a known equation of motion (beam, plate) the local equation of motion method is more efficient and gives a more precise location of the damping. Full frequency response function (FRF) matrix methods can also identify the spatial damping, but are more demanding because the numerical and measurement effort increases with n 2 , where n is the number of measurement points and, consequently, the size of the FRF matrix.