Silver Stem w/ Black Bars
 

It's common to see a black quill stem with silver bars but is it verboten to use a silver stem with black bars? I don't recall seeing this combo on a nice racing build.

I'm building up my Davidson Impulse and have decided to use a silver stem. The bars I prefer are black but I have silver Nitto Noodle bars I could use too. Looking solely from aesthetics, what say you?

I had that setup on my Colnago (which I recently sold), I thought it looked fine and so did my friend who purchased the bike. Bar tape hid most of it anyway.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...43a9228950.jpg

I say that most bikes can have a quirk and be the better for them...!

1” of bars shows. And I have been known to wrap to the stem when not collared and the bars are meh.

I think keeping seatpost and stem same is more attractive to me.

For example, silver seatpost looks better with silver stem (even with black bars). I have two bikes setup like this (picture below).
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...822fa887c.jpeg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...808590592.jpeg

Black seatpost, black stem, silver bars also looks cool to me.

I have one with silver seatpost, black stem, silver bars (factory stock), which is OK but slightly awkward in my opinion.

The only thing verboten is what you determine to be.

I did the opposite, black stem, silver bar. I think it works on my bike because there is a lot of mixture in silver and black, i.e. black brakes, silver/black drive train.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...fd6246d15a.jpg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2ed57ebedb.jpg

Grant Petersen is a fan of mixing black and silver components, so it must be ok.

On my Look bike:
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...51a9c8f22.jpeg
Like the others said- the exposed portion is too small to become a visual problem. In any event, a black 26.0mm drop bar is far less of an eyesore than, say, a threadless adapter, or a 31.8mm bar on one of those oversized quill stems.

If this makes any sense: mismatched stem and bars look (to me) like bodged together,; used whatever I had. That's fine functionally, but if you're asking about esthetics, matched, to me looks more " original" and elegant. Silver v black? Silver, for me wins.
Like dressing yourself.... match your metals when possible! 😀

I've been running Silver/Silver on most of my bikes so far but my long-distance tourer has a silver adaper, black ahead stem and blue handlebars... so I might not be the most critical person when it comes to matching. XD
I am not entirely sure if I want to replace the black headset with a silver one or if I should just paint it black when it gets warm enough in here to do some painting outside.

http://i.imgur.com/KfTtmG4.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/PZTnMbZ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/mDp5WsI.jpg

It’s your bike and whatever you do is up to you . We don’t have to like it!