Chrome is shinier. (Possibly shinier than silver, but I don't thing I've seen a comparison.) It's a good thing that we replaced most of the people-facing plati

Chrome is shinier. (Possibly shinier than silver, but I don't thing I've seen a comparison.) It's a good thing that we replaced most of the people-facing platings with plastics, because those are some nasty metals. The one metal that we still use everywhere is zinc, that isn't a big issue. But nickel in particular allows for a lot of possibilities on the plating color, including some very-high absorption blacks. (And I think all the high-absorption for solar radiation, low absorption for thermal radiation coatings are nickel based.)