Originally Posted by Walt Sherrill

With rifles or revolvers, you can apply a surface color, and some of those finishes -- especially if professionally done -- can be quite hard. With a semi-auto, cycling the slide and barrel will eventually wear away parts of any applied colored finish on the barrel, and only chrome-plating (or a stainless barrel) will resist the normal marks of use and routine wear.

Your best bet would be pick a color you like for the controls (slide stop, trigger, mag release) and just have the barrel polished to a high gloss.

Chrome plating the barrel (and controls) may be an option, but I've never heard of anyone plating a semi-auto barrel after purchase. Polishing looks just about as good, and you can touch it up yourself if needed.

Putting time and money into changing barrel color is kind of a waste, as about the only time anyone can see a colored or plated barrel is when the gun is being field stripped...