Fixtures do well, because you don't touch them much. I haven't had a lot of success trying to spray brass hardware that gets touched a lot, like doorknobs.

Much better to have them plated. I send all my old hardware to platers and get much better results than I would if they were painted. Paint will wear off fairly quickly, due to the amount of use.

I spray painted both my brass dining room hutch and bedroom furniture pulls. I decided against buying new furniture since we plan to retire in a few years elsewhere and won't take it with us, but they needed refreshing. I painted our bedroom furniture white. I looked into having the pulls plated but it was going to be $400. Was not going to spend that for 30 year old furniture I had just painted. Figured I had nothing to lose and they came out great.

Here's what I did.....threw the pulls in a bowl with dish soap and gave them a good cleaning and scrubbing with a toothbrush, rinsed, and set on towels to dry. A thin coat of spray primer, 2 thin coats of nickel spray paint, 1 or 2 thin coats of spray matte poly sealer. I'm in at least a few of the bedroom drawers everyday and there has been no peeling since I did them 4-5 years ago. I'm sure I bought the paint at Lowes or HD.

Edited to add...just make sure you buy paint for use on metal.