Laser color marking is an attractive process to generate functional, aesthetic and durable colorations on various suitable metals such as stainless steel or titanium. The color generation is mainly based on interference effects on thin oxide layers, usually induced by nanosecond pulsed laser irradiation. Due to the large number of mutually influencing processing parameters and different thermal, chemical, structural and topological influences on the coloring results, the process is still not fully understood. Moreover, the reproducibility of the markings and the processing times often do not meet the requirements of industrial manufacturing processes. To improve the understanding of the underlying phenomena comparable colors are generated using different parameter sets. Spectroscopic, microscopic and SEM/EDS analyzes are carried out to investigate the effects of the surface topology, oxide layer properties, chemical composition and heat accumulation on the marking results.