What color was medieval plate armor, actually? Silvery? Or did they paint or coat it with something to keep it from rusting. Its hard to tell from the various paintings and illustrations I’ve seen. Mostly, it looks like a dark grey in those.

So far as I am aware, (and I am not an expert, just a semi-informed amatuer!) the plate armour was generally just plain metal, polished up by a knight’s squires. It was the squire’s job to make sure that the metal didn’t develop rust, and one can imagine the sorts of punishments handed out for blooms of brown! So, I guess a dark metal main coat, with silver highlighting. That’s what I do, anyhows!

Richard

Plain metal would probably be most common for most periods.  If you approach the Renaissance, you’ll find that some armor was “blackened” (probably as a rust- preventive measure, like the bluing of firearms), with decorative panels of gilding or even yellow paint (for cheap suits).

Some years ago there was a U.S. touring art exhibit from the Hapsburg armories—I managed to see the show but didn’t purchase the exhibit guide (stupid, stupid, stupid…).  If you have a chance to find a used copy for sale (or perhaps look at a library copy) it should more than answer a lot of questions about medieval armor construction, appearance, and color.

Hope this helps a little,
Diego

Maybe you are in luck, I’m an armourer.

Armour was treated many different ways, some of the most common were:

Fireblackened, basically like a seasoned cast iron pan, I use a black paint, but ideally it should have a low gloss appearance not flat. This was often done on hammer-finish armours, munitions grade stuff.
Russeted, or browned, controlled rusting by waxing and oiling, low gloss brown.
Blued I’m not sure how iI’d get that look.
For any figures that are going to represent first class troops then Milled or polished is the way to go. I use flat silver on all armoured surfaces and use a strong black ink wash over it. That picks out the detail and tones down the shine a bit.

Good luck! Fred

Col:

That’s a useful post. I’m going to use it as I head into my renaissance project.

Yep thanks Fred useful information.