Brushed steel look with aluminum?

I designed a floor lamp that I planned to make in steel with a brushed finish. I planned to produce several prototypes before going into a production run, but found that tooling for stamping the steel base would cost $15-20K. It was suggested that I machine the prototype bases with aluminum.

The question is, how close can I approach a brushed steel look with aluminum? My research suggests that C6061 alloy forms an excellent hard coating that could be brushed. Am I right? Does the hard anodize have color effects?

You could hardcoat - when undyed the part will change color from grey to greyish bronze or - we currently have a custom dye setup to match stainless steel.

You could try this:

1) Satin brush (with stainless steel brush) the aluminum OR grind aluminum with emery paper of which grit size is your choice of appearance.

2) sulfuric acid anodize to 10 microns. Alternatively, you can try two-step anodized coloring to the light bronze.

Then decide which looks more to the stainless steel.