Phase retarders normally show strong wavelength dependence. Achromatic retarders which exhibit nearly identical characteristics over a wide wavelength spectrum is used in polychromatic light. The present investigation deals with a technique to design and study the characteristics of an achromatic combination of birefringent plates in 800–2000 nm range. The retarder has been designed using calcite, crystalline quartz and ADP. The thicknesses of the plates are 19.38 𝜇m, 446.14 𝜇m and 12.57 𝜇m respectively. The new arrangement of three birefringent plates proposed has the promise of producing a zero-order quarter wave achromatic combination with fairly good accuracy.