I've got LOTS of radiators and I plan on painting all of mine gold. I don't want to get stuck in the rut of having to change the color of the radiators every time I change the color of the room.
I think by going to a metalic color they will look more like jewerly in the room than a piece of furniture.

All of mine match my rooms.

All the radiators in our home are silver colored. No matter what the decor or color of the rooms. Our rads are ornate and I want to show that off. Painting them the same color as the walls would not do them justice. I want them to be seen not blended into the walls. NancyLouise

I have gold ones in rooms where the woodwork is stained and white in rooms with painted trim. I actually like the white ones ..the ornate details really stand out one them.

I painted mine a shade or two darker than the walls so they match but it doesn't look like I'm "trying to hide the elephant in the middle of the livingroom"... With that said I HATE radiator covers!

All are metallic gold, easily done with a can of spray paint.

I took off all the old metal radiator covers and felt liberated! The covers were ugly and oversized. I then painted each radiator with the wall color and now the rooms look much larger than before as the radiators just blend in.

The ones in the house I grew up in were painted to match the walls.

My parent's current home also has radiators, but they're not painted. They have almost a brown lacquer on them that appears to be original to when they were installed.

Well you got enough opinions about colors but I am very curious as to how an explosion in the boiler was so bad that replacing radiators was necessary. That sounds pretty serious. Would you care to share a little of that story?

What about black? Goes with anything.

Hi Joe, Yes, it was very serious. So serious that I've been living in a hotel for the past four months while the house is being almost completely restored, unfortunately. We were out of town when it happened. Something in the old boiler exploded and the pressure it created exploded most of the radiators and cracked all the others. Literally huge chunks of these solid brass radiators flew off like shrapnel. (We found pieces scattered up to 20 feet away!) It's a good thing no one was home. Since it was winter in MN when it happened, of course, no heat = frozen water pipes, which subsequently all burst. My neighbors called the police on New Years Day when they saw water pouring out of my kitchen window. The fireman said they think that water must have been pouring into the house for at least 4 or 5 days. The whole basement, kitchen and dining room were ruined. It has been a long road, complete with horrible dishonest contractors, insurance fiascos, incompetent plumbers, you name it. It's almost over thank goodness. We've just got the floors left to do and the kitchen remaining.

Here are a few pictures of the radiators. I've got tons more pictures of the disaster--ceilings caving in, etc. It's been a little nightmare. The worst part about it has been trying to get the contractor to understand that this is an OLD home and that we are dedicated to preserving the OLD HOME quality, craftsmanship and style. The first time they installed the new radiators, they attached them with flimsy 1/2" copper tubing coming up out of the floor! You can just imagine how stupid and industrial that looked. They also wanted to have the plumbers Sawzall the hardwood floors upstairs to get to piping that was easily accessible through the downstairs ceilings. No way. Then they tried to replace our molding with flimsy plastic 2" Home Depot-type trim -- Hello???? Of course, we've made them redo everything they've done wrong--all because insurance didn't want to hire the contractors who specialize in period homes because the good guys were more expensive... Now they've just paid these contractors more to do everything twice. Go figure. We are NOT letting these guys do our kitchen or basement--we finally succeeded in firing them. (Sorry for the soapbox, but thanks for asking! It's nice to vent sometimes.)

Here is a link that might be useful: House Disaster

jenswrens - you have a great attitude considering what a nightmare you must have been through!

I hope it is all put back together now and you are enjoying your house.

I have a question for everyone - did you just use the same paint type as you did on the walls for the radiators?

When I was growing up most of the radiators I saw were mostly unpainted metal. Some were done to match the walls, others decided to repaint them metallic with silver paint. I don't know if this is true or not, but at one point, years ago I heard that they shouldn't be painted with metallic paint as that didn't allow as much heat to pass through into the room. Of course, even if this was true back then, it may not hold true today with the new paint formulations.

By the way, your story reminded me of my next door neighbor's water disaster. Their house is a summer home and the other winter we had a severe cold snap, their boiler quit, the pipes froze and burst in the ceiling of the living room. The ceiling and floors in there were totally destroyed and had to be ripped out and redone. The wide planked pine floors throughout the first floor were able to be repaired. all the livingroom and dining room furniture was a total loss, all brand new, too.
It would have been a lot worse,but fortunately they had some kind of alarm system put in to alert them if there was a severe drop in temperature within the house. They got the call in the evening, as the husband was packing for a business trip. His wife said he just held out the phone and said, "It's for you". By the time she drove from southwestern Connecticut to Maine the damage had been done.

I have seen mostly silver paint in other old houses....however IMHO I think white metal high gloss paint with white painted trim looks best. I am fortunate enough to still have old very ornate radiators and I feel high gloss white makes the details stand out even more than metallic silver or gold and if the woodwork is painted white it looks very together somehow. Elsewhere I have dark woodwork they are gold/brass.
So sorry about the boiler...yikes!